Speaker: Ren Ito, Assistant Researcher, Silph Co. Digital Systems Division
Date: December 8, 1995
Location: Lecture Hall 7B, Department of Engineering and Applied Computation
[00:00:00 – Recording Begins]
[Applause. Ambient shuffling. A confident but conversational voice takes the mic.]
Ren Ito:
Good morning, everyone.
I’m Ren Ito—assistant researcher to Dr. Gon Jeri at Silph Co., and yes, we are the people responsible for the Pokémon Storage System and the Porynet that you’ve all been quietly using since April.
And I know how that sounds. Another big-name recruiter coming in after a long semester with coffee, slides, and a vague promise that “the future is now.”
But I’m not here to pitch you the present.
I’m here to pitch you what comes next.
[00:00:45 – Slide: “Where We Are”]
Let’s start with what we’ve built. Not the marketing version—just the facts:
- Region-wide infrastructure: A fully connected digital framework spanning all of Indigo—every League-aligned town, city, and center.
- Over 700 active relay towers: Physical network points that anchor and stabilize digital transfers. Think of them as lighthouses for Porygon.
- An indexed digital lattice that allows for Pokémon to be transferred in real-time with no measurable degradation: Structured data space, maintained by Porygon, that protects a Pokémon’s biological and psychic signature during transfer—intact, instant, and precise.
- A Trainer success rate of 99.9991%: Nearly perfect reliability across hundreds of thousands of live transfers. Fewer than 1 in 100,000 experience even minor errors.
- Every major Pokémon Center in Indigo now has full Storage System capability—built atop a structure we call the Porynet: It’s not just running in the background anymore. It is the backbone of how Indigo moves, battles, and bonds.
You’ve used it. Your professors have used it. Your siblings, your rivals—everyone.
But here’s the thing most people miss:
The Porynet isn’t just a service. It’s a platform.
[00:01:54 – Slide: “The Architecture”]
Behind every seamless transfer is a Pokémon—not biological, but artificial.
Porygon.
Designed in-house. Programmed to navigate structured data space. Trained not just to respond to commands, but to adapt to the cognitive patterns of human users.
They are not machines. They are not pets.
They are interfaces.
Not built for battle—but for connection.
Each Porygon acts as a guide through the Porynet’s psycho-quantum layer. They interpret system intent, route transfers, verify data integrity, and establish real-time field connections between distant nodes.
In simple terms? They’re the reason your Pokémon ends up in Pewter City and not a corrupt file in Lavender Town.
[00:02:48 – Slide: “Why You’re Here”]
You’re not just the top of your class.
You’re graduating at the exact moment the old structure is breaking open.
Five years ago, I was in your seat.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The Porynet was just a theory—buried in backroom prototypes and internal memos. The Storage System? It wasn’t even an idea yet. Just a question whispered over lab coffee: "What if Pokémon could be moved, not by roads, but by signal?"
That question?
It became the work of a fellow Celadon University alumni, Bill Sonezaki. Recruited straight out of university. No legacy. No credentials but potential. Now? His Porygon-infrastructure protocols are running our entire region.
That’s how fast this moves.
Now?
It’s not theory. It’s not hidden.
It’s infrastructure.
And now we’re asking questions we couldn’t even articulate back then:
- Can the Porynet support multiple biological connections at once?
- Can data traversal be felt?
- Could Pokémon be trained inside the network?
- What does it mean to build an environment where thought and intent shape movement?
These aren’t rhetorical.
These are the problems we’re working on.
And they’re the problems we want you to help solve.
[00:03:49 – Slide: “The Open Questions”]
Let me ask one now:
Can Porygon evolve?
We don’t have the answer. Not officially. Not publicly.
But I’ll tell you this: we’ve seen behavioral changes in Porygon that can’t be explained by firmware updates alone. Not just speed or memory or accuracy—style. Personality.
A few of our Porygon are doing things we never trained them to do.
Mirroring their handlers’ body language. Emitting tones in response to emotional cues. Learning the rhythm of human speech.
You’ve heard about this secondhand. You’ve seen fragments.
I’m telling you it’s real.
The question isn’t whether Porygon will evolve.
The question is: into what?
[00:04:26 – Slide: “What We’re Looking For”]
We don’t want button-pushers.
We don’t want perfect test scores and rote learners.
We want explorers.
Coders who think in behavior trees. Biologists who see language in bonding. Designers who understand that the best interface is one that feels alive.
We want people who don’t just ask how the system works—
We want people who ask: What else could it do?
You’ve already seen the interface side of this—clean transfers, smooth UI, no latency.
But under the surface, there’s a layer of the Porynet we haven’t fully mapped yet.
We call it the grayspace.
It’s not dangerous. Not unstable. Just… unfamiliar. It's where unstructured data tends to cluster. Where unscheduled echoes appear. Where Porygon sometimes linger longer than necessary.
We don’t know why.
That’s what you would help us find out.
[00:05:35 – Slide: “Internships. Fellowships. Residency Tracks.”]
If this speaks to you—if something inside you sparks at the idea that Pokémon can exist beyond biology, that systems can learn us as we learn them—then I want to see your name on the spring rotation list.
We’re offering:
- Paid summer residencies at Silph Co. headquarters in Saffron.
- Research fellowships in virtual ecology, interface theory, and behavior linguistics.
- A fast-track engineering track for full system integration team members.
And no, we’re not handing you a cubicle and a stack of old code.
We’re giving you access to the core.
You’ll work alongside the minds who built the Porynet from nothing—the real architects.
And if you prove you belong there?
You’ll help us shape what comes next.
[00:06:17 – Closing]
We are not just maintaining a network.
We are building the future of coexistence between Pokémon and humans—in a space that no map has ever charted.
The next frontier isn’t land. It isn’t sky.
It’s thought.
And we’re looking for the people brave enough to walk through it.
Thanks for your time. I’ll be outside after this with application info and Q&A.
[00:06:52 – Recording Ends]
Curator’s Note (added 2008, Celadon University Archives):
The December 1995 lecture by Ren Ito marked a key milestone in Silph Co.’s third recruitment wave, delivered just months before the company’s silent deployment of prototype adaptive firmware into the Porynet’s relay network in spring 1996.
These early firmware models would later be directly linked to the first documented cases of non-programmed behavioral divergence in Porygon-class units—phenomena now recognized as emergent consciousness markers.
Historians and systems theorists now regard this lecture as one of the earliest public acknowledgments that the Porynet was never just a tool or infrastructure—it was an ecosystem waiting to respond.
Several key figures in modern Porynet development trace their origins back to this moment. Most notably, Dr. Kaye Morimi, a then-student in the audience, would go on to pioneer cross-dimensional firmware syncing, leading the integration of Rotom species into digital devices.
Her groundbreaking work, conducted between 2003–2007, laid the foundation for Rotom-based interfaces in phones, Pokédex models, and interactive guidance systems—all enhanced through Porynet-aligned processing layers.
What began as a recruitment talk became a spark.
And from that spark, an entire generation of researchers lit the path forward.
Archived for public access under the Indigo Historical Technology Commission
Curated by Celadon University, Department of Advanced Technoecology