Bad EGG

I enjoy messing around with the third generation, okay? It’s easy to plug it into the emulator and go nuts. Yeah, I have a Gameshark — but it’s easier to use Visual Boy. You can do all kinds of shit with it. But you guys know that, you probably do it yourselves every day. I’m not here to waste your time, I’m here to tell you a story.

I was fucking around with my most recent file, hacking in a moveset for an Exploud. It was a simple thing, just giving it Surf. They can Surf in generation V, see — I was amusing myself by making generation 3 Pokèmons act like the ones in Black and White. (As much as I could, anyway; some moves just didn’t exist). It was a lark, for a while.

For a while.

I was pretty used to things going wrong, it’s not like I freaked out whenever I saw big ol’ question mark show up in my party. I want you to know that. More than anything, I want you to know that. When a Bad EGG turned up in my party, I didn’t shit my pants. Hell, I expected it!

Bad EGGs turn up when checksums don’t add up, and now and then when you’re using codes — you can look them up if you’re really interested. This one had been caught in a Master Ball, and it was holding a Root Fossil: both things which Bad EGGs can do. ‘It’ had fainted. I was amused that my Bad EGG had all of these little details, but I soon forgot about it. I’d get rid of that sort of junk later, since I expected a good deal of things like Bad EGG to show up.

I wish I’d paid attention when I visited the Pokemon centre. All I can remember of that first visit is the nurse’s text; it seemed to lag, the window was blank for just a moment. But I wasn’t paying attention — I had my speed-up key jammed down and was mashing B. You know how it is, right? You don’t want to bother with the text in Pokemon, you’re interested in the mechanics.

I was amused to see that my Bad EGG had recovered from FNT, and I think I might have even said something out loud — some stupid little comment like, “Hey buddy, feeling better?” The sort of thing you say when your parents aren’t home and you’re just being silly with yourself. The egg bounced up and down in my party screen, and I felt a chill go down my spine as I looked at that nice healthy egg with a fossil.

When I realised my creeped-out feelings, I told myself that Bulbapedia was to blame. Bulbapedia took a sort of malicious humour in describing the Bad EGG as something really freaky, and my brain took the description and ran. I mean, check this out: ‘Bad Eggs are not really Pokémon eggs, and may possibly never have been, …’ — it’s the sort of thing you read in a Lovecraft novel. The brief moment of this mass of data acting like a real Pokemon had given me the willies, that’s all, and some site on the internet had given it creepy context. Once I rationalised my feelings, I kind of enjoyed them! The feelings were nostalgic, emotions from back when I was nine and I just knew that if I left my door open Missingno. would come and get me.

Bolstered with bravery from that trip down memory lane, I opened up Bad EGG’s status screen. I convinced myself that I was amused, not frightened, and I wanted more laughs from the glitch. Laughs were not had as I read its description.

‘It moves around inside sometimes. It must be close to hatching.’

Now, I’m no statistician, but I’d say about 90% of Bad EGGs don’t ever go past the first cycle message. They just don’t hatch. But it still wasn’t unforgivably strange: some eggs do hatch! I ignored the little part of my stomach which wanted to do a flip-flop out of my gullet, and kept playing.

The Bad EGG didn’t mean anything.

The game progressed normally for me as I trained up my Pokemon, with only a little message screen lag. I put thoughts of Bad EGG out of my mind. If I hadn’t, I might have realised that the troubles I started to experience were linked with the Bad EGG’s development.

The dialogue screens lagged, leaving white screens there for a second or two as I tried to fight trainers or exit out of Jenny’s dialogue box. I was playing with the game sped up, I had the space bar hammered down like my life depended on it; I shouldn’t have even noticed the lag. It wasn’t normal, and I wanted to know why. I let go of the speed button and talked to Nurse Jenny.

“ We hope to see you again!”

It wasn’t too harmful, just a delay. A long delay. I kept playing despite the feeling that something was wrong, a primal feeling in the back of my stomach. I’d probably just messed something up, I reasoned; I had been fucking with the game, after all.

The blank lag stuck with the dialogue boxes for longer and longer as I kept playing. I was in the middle of a lonely route — in the middle of the wilderness, if you want to get florid — when the game itself lagged. It stopped for a moment, and I’m not pulling your leg when I say that my computer lagged with it. Everything slowed down, just for a second.

“ “, said the dialogue box, as the egg-hatching animation began to play. There was sound, but it was slow, distorted — the music was lagging along with the text. Ruby was acting as if it were in labour, I thought, and I thrust the image away as I stared at the screen. It’s fine, it’s okay, I can deal with a little question mark coming in. It’s not so weird. Just a glitch, right?

But a question mark didn’t come out. Nor did a Rhydon, a Bulbasaur, or a Pikachu.

Nothing came out.

Visual Boy hanged, and so did my computer.

Don’t get me wrong, everything’s been more-or-less fine since then. I wasn’t eaten by demons or spirited away by Unown or anything, none of the stuff you only read about it in stories. But… look, I told you this story for a reason, because I want to get something impossible off my chest.

Every now and then, when I open my mouth to speak, nothing comes out. My computer hasn’t been quite up to its powerhouse self lately, either; I mean, I try to explain it away, but I can’t deny it’s running slower. Sometimes text I’m reading seems to be replaced by blank space, but then I look back and it’s fine. I’m seeing things, I guess, and all this stuff is starting to scare me. Bulbapedia said that it was never an egg at all, so… what was it? What hatched from the Bad EGG?

It’s crazy. I’m sorry, I know it’s crazy. There are good reasons why I can’t speak, and I probably just downloaded some junk onto my computer to make it run slow; sometimes you can ignore that sort of thing until it really dawns on you, I know. It’s just…

It’s just that sometimes my parents seem to move in slow motion, too, like I’m watching some sort of twisted YouTube video a kid made for shits and giggles.

And I won’t be able to admit this tomorrow when I’m sober and thinking straight, so I hope to God I wrote everything down here.

Later, guys.

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