Anthony, Mary, and Andrew, who had just said the most outrageous thing the former had ever heard, as well as the other interns, started to walk on top of the creeks towards the lab, where they chatted with their own peers and closer friends. Their Pokemons were doing it too: Zubat flew around with Butterfrees while occasionally sneezing because of the spores being released by the Bug-type Pokémon, while Miltank was running around and being the seat of Skitty, Pikachu, and Bulbasaur; it was also sneezing from time to time.
The interns are now on their way to the office of Prof. Oak, who seems to be having a busy day, or, from what Anthony and Mary saw from their adviser, Prof. Josie Ford, may also be just locking himself up because he was too lazy to work and would not be accessible for half a day. While thinking of this, Anthony and Mary smirked a little, which made their friend Andrew confused, craning his neck a little bit.
"What?"
For a moment, Anthony even looked in front of them, but he could only see a bunch of backsides and some Krabbies scurrying around to get away from humans (as they are like the Caterpies of mono-type specialists of water types in Pallet Town, they became quite elusive to humans).
"No, we just remembered something. Anyway, what did you research back there? The data collection task got so busy just when we got used to it, so we weren't able to make time for video calling."
Mary said while Anthony nodded, though he also can't have any time for video calling his mom and dad because he's also getting closer and closer online with Cynthia Celestica. However, he would get attention from his friend and fellow interns because of this, something that he can't dispel by being casual and nonchalant about it, like how he portrayed himself despite being Hana and Ben Dover's child.
One should remember that while Cynthia just looks like an immature child with lots of firepower for Anthony, she looks mature and quite the beauty in the eyes of these children, and the children that they are, they might get jealous for something so childish.
"We have it quite easy in terms of our paper, you know. We just have to wait for the response of the statistician and give us the data."
Anthony added whilst Mary nodded silently. Andrew, on the other hand, seemed to remember the most wonderful days of his life as his calm eyes shone bright again; the two even craned their neck a little and squinted their eyes at how metaphorically bright it is. Soon, Andrew finally talked.
"Yeah, that didn't happen for us either; instead, we in the Pokemon Behaivors are given the choice of being a contributor on the new artificial lifeform/hyperadvanced AI being developed by all the Pokemon Professors. Apparently it's called 'Project Rotom,' and it's supposed to streamline Pokedex usage by trainers and finally make it so that old phones can be used as a proper and functioning Pokedex. It's a multi-paper project like the bridge near Lavender Town, and we accepted it. What we did is we wrote the Intro, which is, by the way, a way to kind of tell the readers how..."
Anthony and Mary nodded silently at the blabber of their friend, interjecting their own knowledge from time to time. Anthony, of course, rejoiced to hear about Rotom and its origin in this true world of Pokemon while also being amazed at how a person can really love something so complicated and rigorous, though he really is not the one to talk, as he bet he would sound like that when talking either about his job or Pokemon in his previous life.
The talk of Andrew went on until the interns arrived in front of the office of Prof. Oak and passed the lab reports of their long term projet Pokemons and the hard copy of the IMRAD of their research paper, which prompted the two to get the paper from the hand of Andrew and pass it on his behalf, who continued to talk incessantly and continously until the 3 finally returned in the entrance of their dormitory. Finally, when Andrew saw the familiar rows of printers and the security guard that has a more stoic look than the previous one due to him being an Interpol agent, he pushed the handle of his luggage. Looking at this, Miltank, who had already stopped being with its friend Pokémon, helped with the luggage and demanded the keys from Andrew, which the boy gave to the Pokémon.
"And that's the process of our paper, which is just one of many; as a bonus, I even get to learn how to code. Maybe I'll code an LLM that's more focused on behaviors of Pokemons than an ultra-powerful one like Rotom, which is apparently planned to be released as an artificial life form. How about you two?"
Anthony and Mary watched as Miltank, with moderate effort, put their friend's luggage into his room and also pushed back the handle of their own suitcases. Miltank happily ran towards the two and also demanded their keys before running off to the second floor, where the room of the two is. After watching this silently, Anthony finally replied
"Eh, you know we measured different types of pollution. We also gathered lots of on-hand data for an LLM, though more specific in predicting the location of several naturally polluting Poison-type Pokemons and tell if they're invasive or not; that would help Pokemon Rangers."
While the 3 were continuing their talk, Mary also raised her index finger.
"We also get to code a part of that LLM, though Anthony and I are personally not fond of it. When we tried creating a simple website, we couldn't get past the tutorial."
Anthony nodded at this; he specifically hates coding and even fears it, as some of his friends are computer science or statistical science focusing on coding remote controlled things or LLMs and no matter how his business degree have an ample amount of statistics, he just can't wrap around his head on how do these people envision how does an AI work. However, his university before made it so that Anthony knew when it would work and when it would not.
He will just stick to being a Pokemon trainer and associate field researcher, plus the AI they were doing here doesn't hallucinate and would honestly tell if it can't do something.
The friends continued to talk until they finally went their separate ways around the stairs. Anthony and Mary took a longer time to be separated as they had the same floor, so they continued their talk before going to their respective room and receiving their keys from Miltanks, who had a proud look on its face.
"Later?"
As Anthony sighed, he heard his phone buzz, and from there came the message from Mary, which made him squint and also made Zubat get curious as it craned its left ear from the table it was on before flying onto Anthony's head.
"Tomorrow."
Anthony replied before getting his shoes off and slumping to bed.
"Zuu?"
Zubat tapped its wing into the forehead of its trainer; however, Anthony just pulled it by the nape and put it on the side of the bed. He felt quite tired and drowsy.
In the last few months, unlike Mary, who has come to terms with and has come to truly tolerate research and data collection and become quite skilled in making papers, Anthony has come to actually love it. Of course, it's still tiring, but not tiresome anymore, and Anthony actually quite missed going to different places and meeting people and Pokemons there. His adventures are well documented too, in the form of online conversations with his mom and dad as well as Cynthia, who he also was able to get closer with.
Apparently, Cynthia got banned for the whole season to get out of Sinnoh because she flushed out the two remaining Team Rocket members out of the sewer (one of which abducted her Riolu) using the Stun Spore attack of Roserade. In the news, there's even a picture of two pseudo-legendaries: Garchomp and Tyranitar frozen in front of each other while they were both in superhero landing positions. For a month, it has become the wallpaper of the Pokédexes of trainers that Anthony has collected data from.
Also, it became a premium GIF in Pokegram, with Cynthia having some royalties on it. This made Anthony rather jealous, as someone just around 6 years older than her has already made her face and her Pokemons' profitable. He wanted to be like that, too.
Anyway, like he said earlier, his Zubat and Miltank have also grown quite a lot from training with the simulated underwater exercises of the satellite lab of the Cinnabar Center of Green Development. This facility, he knew, will still be plenty useful in the long future, and he has been using some of his 'it's okay because I'm a kid' powers to try and ask the adults if he can go there even after the internship is over; however, it has been unsuccessful the whole time.
Even Anthony's ultimate cheat when coming to this world called 'being a nepo baby' failed because his mom and dad said that them pulling some strings for him to get into the internship with limited screening is already the most 'satellite parenting' they can give him, and he has to figure it out on his own this time. Anthony reckoned that he has to become an associate field researcher to be able to go there regularly.
Such were Anthony's thoughts as he dozed off in the land of dreams. Soon, he woke up with the wing slaps of Zubat, that has been pointing at his phone this whole time; on it was an email which has the title 'Approval to Publish Dover and Hane's research: 'Noise Pollution and Normal-type Pokemon Biodiversity in Fuchsia City''.
"Oh. We're officially published researchers now."
At the moment, Anthony smiled because of this; Mary's voice was heard reverberating through the corridor of the second floor.
"ANTHONYYYYY! WE ARE PUBLISHED RESEARCHERS NOW!"
Anthony didn't reply and instead let Mary bust his door open and jump towards him as she went for a hug, making him also see the cheers of the other person they were with on the second floor. Though that person immediately went downstairs.
As Anthony received the hug (or tackle) from Mary, falling on his bed again, he sighed a deep one to fully wake himself up. Anthony then smiled.
"I guess we are."
And that's how Anthony's first day in Pallet went after 9 months on Cinnabar Island.
__________________
Because of the attempted kidnapping incident in the medical unit of the complex of the Pokemon Lab of the Kanto region, there are only 7 interns left. Either those who have forced their parents not to sign the dropout papers or those who are being forced to be more independent, this made the conference room where their meetings happen be anything but congested.
Despite this, the interns are all talking about their approved papers, which is, if not for the fact that Anthony and Mary saw their adviser, Prof. Josie, checking another intern's paper from a different lab, would cause them to suspect that they were given a 1 free trial just to say that they have produced published researchers one hundred percent of the time. However, Anthony remembered that his parents said that they themselves needed 2 resubmissions to two different journals to get published.
"We don't have any revisions!"
"What, we have minor ones, but it's fine, mostly typographical errors."
"Heh, we have minor ones too, though it's telling us to improve our interpretations."
Anthony and Mary were talking with their fellow interns; both were bragging about how they need only minor revisions. Anthony is not that bummed out that they need to fix their grammar; it's better than the alternative of being rejected outright. In this conversation, he observed that there are kids who need to reinterpret parts of their data or even restart the whole Introduction outright.
However, this is marked as 'conditions for final revisions' and is not a condition for rejection. So all 7 of them are still technically officially published authors, as their revisions are confirmed to be the final touches, so their work could be as perfect as possible.
_But I do wonder, if AI programmers in this world can create an artificial life form considered as a Pokemon, why are there no AI that corrects your grammar and punctuation? That doesn't seem to add up in the spirit of development._
In the middle of his mulling, a man in a lab gown with greying hair opened the door of the conference room, and when the students noticed the man, they stopped all that they were doing and talking about and stood up.
"Good morning, Professor Oak."
As the Kanto Pokémon Professor heard this, he smiled before gesturing for the children to go back to their seats.
"Good morning, interns. Welcome back to the lab. Today and until you graduate, we will be taking care of Ghost-type Pokémon."