By Amanda Knox

Reality is better, certainly. At the end of the day, reality is what’s left when all enhanced realities are put away. It used to be easier to tell the difference—art, film, music, playstations—all of these enhanced realities were limited in their means and scope such that they could distract from, inform, communicate with, but not substitute for reality. Now technology has advanced and has become so integral to our personal and social lives that the line between enhanced reality and reality reality is blurred. Devices have become real extensions of our physical body in the virtual reality we’ve created for ourselves. Now there’s Pokemon Go.

Imagine. It’s rush hour and I’m on the bus, crammed into a side seat at the back between two broad-shouldered men wearing reflective construction vests. Most of the commuters stare vacantly out the window, over the heads of other commuters, down at their phones. I’m no better, flipping through the profiles of Seattle-based tattoo artists on Instagram. The bus stops, more people cram in and the mechanical bus voice instructs them to, “Please make room for others. Please proceed to the back.” Three droopy commuters shuffle into the narrow floor space in front of me and turn around, dangling from the hand rails above my head. There’s a hunched older woman in a purple knit cap, a teenager bouncing on the toes of his dirty sneakers, and a businessman in a trenchcoat. My phone buzzes and I look up. The businessman reaches into his coat, pulls out his sleek, black iPhone, checks the screen, looks around. Our eyes meet. It’s on.

This is a very different world than the one where I couldn’t be detached from my Gameboy and the one game I ever played on it: Pokemon Yellow. In that world my game play was limited to a two-dimensional, pixelated landscape observed two square inches at a time. In the wild places of this world you encountered Pokemon native to the area, which you battled and captured, or else Pokemon trainers like yourself, who you pitted your Pokemon against to gain fighting experience that made your Pokemon stronger. In each town you battled against the members of the local Pokemon training gym and, if you beat the gym leader, earned the town’s merit badge. You were a Pokemon Master once you’d earned every merit badge, but you won the game only by capturing at least one of every species of Pokemon, a quest that involved strategically exploring every diverse environment of the game world.

Pokemon Go promises nothing more than exactly this, but in the real world. Thus, more than any other subsequent manifestation of the game, Pokemon Go addresses the question that my imagination inevitably poses when role playing: what would my actual world look like if Pokemon were in it?

More awesome! Take the hypothetical busride battle between Mr. Business and myself. As Pacific Northwest locals, the types of Pokemon we would more likely encounter on the whole would be grass, water, and fairy types—as opposed to, say, sand and rock types that you might find in rural Idaho, or the Middle East, or the Sahara Desert. Mr. Business might have more opportunity than I to travel and trade, so he might have a few surprises up his sleeve. Since I work in Pioneer Square, home of the Spooked in Seattle ghost tour, I might have captured a Ghastly, a hard-to-find ghost type Pokemon, by pacing around the dark, deserted square after work. I might even have captured an Eevee, a very shy Pokemon, because I happen to live by a quiet Greenbelt on the edge of town. A simple, normal type Pokemon at a low level, Eevee would become a valuable asset once leveled up and evolved into Flareon—a fire type Pokemon, otherwise impossible to find in my region. The more urbanite Mr. Business on the other hand, who stepped onto the bus in the Industrial district and probably works at one of the corporate offices, would probably have captured Rattata and Pikachu, normal and electric type mice, and Pidgey, a normal/flying type, the Pokemon equivalent of a rat with wings. But Mr. Business might also be a frequenter of gyms, and have discovered there some powerful fighting type Pokemon, like Hitmonlee, lurking in some far corner of the locker room. Buttoned up in the daytime, Mr. Business might spend his free time in back alley dive bars and be a collector of dark type Pokemon, like Houndoom. Me on the other hand, my first captured Pokemon more than likely would be a Cottonee, a goat-like grass/fairy Pokemon, that I found in my neighbors’ back yard, frolicking around their actual goat tethered there.

The hypothetical matchup doesn’t come down in my favor. His dark and fighting type Pokemon are super-effective (that’s the technical term) against my normal and fairy types. Quick Attack after Crunch after Mega Kick, I’d watch with bated breath as my babies’ came under attack and their health points drained away. Only once it was over would I take a deep breath and pick up a whiff of my own nervous sweat. One of the broad-shouldered men, looking over my shoulder, would pat me on the back. Mr. Business and I would shake hands. Chuckling, he would tell me about this epic encounter he had with the leader of the LA gym, a cocky ex-producer who specializes in electric types and didn't take well to losing. Had I earned Seattle’s merit badge yet? Because, of course, Seattle would have its own gym, and gym leader, specializing in water type Pokemon. His name would be Frank and he’d work at Amazon.

I’d happen to glance over and see a critic in the corner, shaking his head at our dweeby, adolescent socializing. But then the critic would go back to his own smart phone, back to scrolling through his Facebook feed and his Candy Crushing. He’s just as trapped in the Matrix. Better to bridge the gap between virtual reality and reality reality by marrying the two, by enhancing our environment and finding further means to access those populating it, even if through a game and a device. After all, the point of Pokemon Go is that reality is better.