#original founders

[lybra-search-blog]

Yoko Murasaki

Yoko Murasaki was a Physicist known for being the first founder of multinational organization and scientific powerhouse, LYBRA. In her tragically short life, she has also published 3 books and close to 30 academic papers in her field of specialty, Picotechnology. She is also credited with creating the first working formula for the Theory of Everything - more commonly known as the Final Theory - for which she received a Nobel Prize in Physics.

Personal Life

Yoko grew up under the tutelage of the Geneticist Dr. Murasaki, whose work with DNA cloning earned him the half-teasing nickname, “Mother of Genetics.” In Yoko’s autobiography, she explained the strange noun-choice was because, “the discipline already had Mendel. It just needs a mother to nurture it.” She said this was what her father’s colleagues would say in response to his half-hearted grumbling when referred to by the moniker. 

About a third of her autobiography was, in fact, dedicated to the moments she shared with her father. She confirms what the public has long suspected - that her love for Science was deeply influenced by a child’s worship of the man who was always right - her father, and that she adamantly refused to be called by her last name because it was what people called her father. Almost the entirety of the book was written in a style which resonates strongly with Jung’s writings - of whom Yoko was a big fan - as if she was slyly suggesting for her autobiography to be read as a self-psychoanalysis on her strained relationship with her father. 

“Living under the shadow of a giant wasn’t easy, but through this way of life, I’ve learned that even small people can do great things... or so other autobiographies would say. I think I’d have learned that lesson anyway, even if my giant had not stood so selfishly in the way of the light. Perhaps it would’ve taken me a few more years to realize it on my own, though what do we humans really have besides time? Time goes on and on and on - linear, in choppy, straight lines; endlessly looping, in curving circles. Life is a cycle in which some people could not help but be giants with shadows that cover the expanse of the Earth, and others who grow tired of the darkness would someday rise up into the light themselves.”

- Yoko Murakami, Self

Most critics have reached a consensus in the discourse on Yoko’s tone in Self, agreeing that it is a far cry from her usual friendly personality. However, many still disagree that her friendliness was “nothing but a sham,” as an outspoken LYBRA CEO once claimed (after he resigned from the position). 

In her review of Self, popular book-critic Michiyo Kakutani expresses an idea which has since been adopted by many who are pro-Yoko: “I believe that human beings are capable of a spectrum of emotions, and this revelation of Yoko’s other side, so to speak, should not be treated with hostility, but with welcoming acceptance, as we finally receive the last puzzle piece which allows us to form a complete picture of the multi-dimensional woman she is.”

LYBRA

In the third and final part of her biography, Yoko divulges critical details on LYBRA’s humble beginnings. “It all started,” she said, “when I realized there was a more efficient algorithm for time travel.” To date, Yoko has never publicized this algorithm, and it is said that only top-ranking officers within LYBRA has knowledge of its specifics. 

She also describes how she first met Raphael when she tested her algorithm by traveling to the future. As she shouted an excited, “Yes!” at the successful implementation, “a tall, dark, handsome boy walked up to me and asked, in the lazy slur I’d later associate with Raphael, if it would be alright for me to ‘shut my tits.’ I slapped him.” 

However, they soon became fast friends. As Yoko realized he was someone she could envision building her dream with, he asked if she wanted to travel to the past together, “under the pretense of recruiting more people for the research center I was just describing to him.” The little exchanges Yoko recounted between herself and Raphael has led many to believe that they share a romantic relationship, though neither of them has ever confirmed nor denied the rumors. 

Yoko was one of the most prominent leaders of the “Paradox Lie” movement that took off around the time she completed her algorithm. Advocates of "Paradox Lie” believe that time paradoxes are a scientific hoax reasoned by circular argument. Thus, Yoko has never shown any hesitation in time traveling and exposing herself as a time traveler, making her one of the few scientists who time travels on a regular basis. This means that she wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the past, though she has never traveled back as far as Raphael wanted to go. She was a bit suspicious of his motives at first, but eventually relented and took them to the 21st century, where they would meet the Enigmatic Duo and be introduced to Lanzo. This is also where Yoko’s fascination with modernist literature first developed, and she wrote that she would often go on weekend coffee dates with B, who was “as much of a literature fanatic as I am, if not more.” It is said that the four would return to fetch Lanzo after traveling back to Yoko’s natural time period, for reasons unknown.

Death

Yoko took her own life at the young age of 38. Her body was discovered on a Tuesday morning in her apartment, four days after her estimated date of death. Her subordinates reported thinking it was strange for Yoko to miss work, and when she was absent for yet another day on Tuesday, without notice, they knew something was wrong. They also said that, to their knowledge, nothing out of the ordinary happened on Friday, the last time any of them saw her. 

She left a letter on her living room table. Though there is no official release of the contents of the letter, a leaked investigation report contains this paragraph historians believe was an excerpt from her suicide note: “I’m sick of playing the nice guy. No more. All this time, I’ve been pretending and pretending and pretending. You love to see me smile, don’t you? You love Yoko, the country’s sweetheart, don’t you? Well, sorry, that isn’t who I really am. Maybe if I died, I thought, they’d finally understand. Which is why, I had to do this.”

[omnipokemonproducts]

So Leigh, why do you hate Margaret and Paul so much?

Leigh gave herself pause. It has been a long time since she had to recall either of those two. Even then that was hard to do as the company had a giant statue of the six founders and often times she would hear tour guides talk on them when they were asked about. Margaret and Paul were very tough to talk about without causing ire from those who think you should be respectful of the dead.

“I would just like to start off by saying I know both of these people are important in their own ways. Paul was the one who made the creation of several items cheaper and stronger and he was also a brilliant industrialist who came up with effective ways attempting to make technology easier to use for the consumer. Margaret was pragmatic, charismatic woman who always had this unnerving drive to her. She could sell a concept on most ideas and was a pragmatic thinker when it came to subduing and managing feral or savage pokemon.”

The young woman paused. This was hard because despite the good these two have done, there was so much baggage for these two that it could not be ignored. “But despite the positive points I just said both are immensely awful people in their own different way.”

“Paul, he preferred Saul fittingly I must say, was an immense profiteer. He lived under the mantra that ‘Technology should be in the homes of everyone’. But there was a massive asterisk that read ‘If you can pay’. While that is reasonable as certain bits of tech should not just be handed out for free, he did tend to try to price certain pieces of tech at extremely high prices. At one point he had made some nanobots that could make the lives of people who live with AIDs or cancer easier. This would be understandable if it weren’t for the fact that he tended to give these nanobots to very wealthy ‘donors’ who may or may not have even needed the bots. Not helped by his choice to dock certain employee’s pays if they request insurance or if they spoke out against him.” 

Leigh chuckled slightly. “Though there was one time he was doing Q&A over the phone and someone asked about how the price of the nanobots could be priced lower while keeping them quality, Paul hung up but was caught on audio calling the caller an asshole over the phone.” After Leigh chuckled she recomposed herself. “He also had several mistresses that he would give these pieces of tech to and would often blow money that was supposed to be used on projects on his own personal bullshit.”

“Margaret was a whole can of worms. For context, she was actually the person who initially proposed the idea of what would eventually become the Sentinel Unit. The problem was that she was too gung ho on trying to pacify certain enigmatic pokemon. She was against pokemon that were noticeable hybrids, taurs and even certain variations of legendaries. She wanted the world to be perfectly uniform, with an variations of ‘undesirables’ to be either captured and experimented on or killed. Naturally this caused some problems. Several people criticized her for being a fascist for these thoughts, made worse when she made some awful remarks on how being gay was a mental illness and that she proposed center to help ‘correct this problem’ as well as serve as quarantine for when the AIDs pandemic was a problem. That little comment surprisingly did not destroy her career and she actually had some supporters even in the government that agreed with her.”

Leigh paused, feeling particularly haunted by the last one. “In fact when she died there were people who super happy she died, with jokes being made on the fact that she had developed Alzheimer’s Disease and that it was karmatic punishment for some of the policies and statements she had made. I was never one of those people, but I cannot deny I was a twinge happy when she died.”