I found a copy of Pokémon Silver at a garage sale for fifty cents. The cartridge was beaten up but functional. I loaded it expecting either a blank save or a stranger's game to delete. Instead I found a save file named GOLD.
I decided to look around before deleting it.
The trainer sprite had no legs. This is not a standard glitch in Pokémon Silver — the trainer sprite always has legs. This one was just a torso and head, floating above the ground. The overworld map showed the player deep in Mt. Silver, which is the endgame area where you fight Red.
I moved the character. It walked normally despite having no legs, which was, somehow, the part that bothered me most.
The party had one Pokémon: a level 0 Pokémon with a question mark for both its name and species. Its stats were all 0. Its only move was Curse.
I walked further into the cave. The game's music was wrong — the standard cave music, but reversed, and at the wrong speed. The cave was empty of trainers and wild Pokémon. Eventually I found a clearing where Red should have been standing.
Instead there was a trainer sprite — a child's sprite, the protagonist — kneeling on the ground. When I interacted with it, text appeared:
"It hurts."
Then on the next line:
"You aren't here."
The screen faded to black and played a Pokémon's cry — but no Pokémon in the games has a cry like this one. Low, extended, ending with what sounded like a human voice attempting to form a word.
When the screen returned, the trainer was standing normally. The Pokémon with the question mark was gone. The party screen was empty. The Pokémon count in the trainer card read: 251 seen. 000 owned.
The trainer walked to the center of the clearing on its own. The screen flashed white.
The game reset to the title screen and the GOLD save file was gone.
I tried to boot the game again. The cartridge showed only battery corruption — just white noise on the screen.
I still have it. The sticker on the front has someone's name scratched into it, above the Pokémon Silver logo, in what looks like it was done with a key or a nail.
The name is GOLD.