And now, the question of how the heck to secure her place, is, uh, very open.

She does have some ideas, though...  Also a sample of this magic's alchemical signature to take by way of Chemical X and the stretching-out conversion trick, come to think of it.

Anyway.  Wards.  Physical wards.

This...

Poses a problem.  On account of not, particularly, having IFF worth a damn as a readily-available primitive.

...Though.  She has made magical networking software.  She could always use that as a basis.  And something something asymmetric cryptography, something something hashes something salts...  Oh, hey, she could use quantum foam as a noise source.  Take that, wall of lava lamps.

...Anywho.  Firstly, she needs to figure out how to read passive signals like whatever this nonsense is.

...Also, she needs to make an air purifier sticky note.  That at least is pretty simple.  (Mors + Air and Mors + Air + Air go in, Air + Air comes out.  She's actually going to store the Mors for later, though.  You never know when you might need to take advantage of a store of concentrated essence of deathyness.)

Air purifier scribbled out, and uploaded to alchemy-space, she sets about uploading a few more useful templates.  A Vitae+Mors refiner, the endless salt duplicator, her lead-to-silver and lead-to-gold refining towers, her atmosphere-to-I/O-port builder....

Also her sample-taker - both varieties.

Anyway.  Where was she...

Figuring out how the heck to actually make either a lightsaber or a home defense ward.

...Well, back to the geometry mines she goes.

...Rhombic dodecahedra?  They have useful properties like "I can pretend that Opus Magnum manipulators work the same way they do in 2-space but with extra rotational degrees of freedom" and "looking pretty"...

...And, come to think of it, perhaps being able to tile the surface of a given 'sphere' with the particle/molecule she hypothesized as a carrier for the screwdriver -

- she never actually finished loading the darn thing, did she.

Well, that's an easy fix.  Although, come to think of it, why did she think she needed to make it out of wind?  Fire is actually probably more appropriate.  So if she just cues up the trick for fitting things inside other things, and hooks up a quintessence and a vitae/mors refiner from some infinite salt loops...

Yeah, that ought to actually do.  Instead of only look like it ought to do.

...Anyway.  She has to do...Stuff.  To the things.  So they'll do stuff.  This may be a problem.  She really doesn't have metaprogramming, not yet - and to dynamically generate a structure like this...

Well, actually, though, why wouldn't it be plausible to make it static-but-switched?

Anyway, she has the general gist of it.  She just needs to make the quintessence spiral.  ...She can probably just do that.  ...Can she actually just do that?  Well, she could always try making an instruction -

...Actually, she can just do that by binding the tip together.  Duh.  So the question is how she actually constructs the binding framework, which seems like it ought to have a relatively simple answer - she already has the idea of framing an I/O node at the front edge of the sequence anyway, for reprocessing...

...Also, she's pretty sure she has hammerspace now, after what she did succeed in doing, yesterday.  So that's good.  She'll exploit the hell out of that later.

Anyway.  Next up, making something that will actually ride the quintessence and shred the things that need to be shredded.

It's really rather simple, relatively speaking, to create something almost like a propeller with knives on.

(It's less simple to pack them down into a single space for recycling afterwards, but that's just how it is.  "...Note to self: investigate the paradox of the doubled sphere sometime, now that you're doing raw geometry.  Who was that, Banach-Tarski?  Banach-Tarski.  And the axiom of choice is assumable because magic.  I should check if it's been proven for anything that's not topologically equivalent...")

...How would she build a waldo - the Opus Magnum kind, Spacechem waldoes are definitely just magic circles - anyway?  Rather than having to manually assume them into being.

...Okay, "quintessence on the edge of an iron gripper 'T'-shape, built off of a ring of vitae/mors, anchored by quintessence" is not exactly where she thought she'd go with this, but it would work.  (It could also be silver, but that would take too long to spool up from scratch.  And considering that most of this matter is fundamentally sleight-of-hand on the universe's numbers, speed of operations to keep it from noticing before she's done will certainly help.)

Send help, I'm taking the axiom of choice </shitpost>

But seriously, I just realized that I can duplicate arbitrary topologically zero-holed matter just by mathing at it really hard.  And probably more than that; I just don't know if the sphere duplication was proved for toroids, f'rex.

Clearly I'm going to also need to keep studying math.

, she sends to OS.

Anyway.  After yesterday's fiasco, I've realized: Something Akin To Hammerspace: Probably invented, entirely by accident.  Woo.  Next up, home defense wards!  (Thus all the karking geometry.  But it'll make a lightsaber too, by the same principles, so I'll have to hope it's worth it.)

...Ooh, I could use the Spacechem C&C framework here to great effect in extensibility of the single-wardline I already have generable...  Probably only against rectangles, yet, but that's still pretty useful.  ...Well, rectangles and hexes.  If I needed to cover bee cells for some reason.

...I can't believe it took me until now to realize that I can just make Maxwell's D(a)emon.  Excuse me whilst I cackle madly.

...Also, I can 100% just transmute e.g. pencil lead into diamonds, straight up.  Why did it take me this long to figure that out?  ...Probably because I'm so used to thinking of it being actual lead on the OM board where it'd actually have a diamondoid structure if assembled properly...

...Hm, I could also make nanotubes.  Of arbitrary length.

...Anyway.  I should make a specification for properly generalizeable alchemy/chemistry...  It's neat that I can still keep to something akin to the conceit of having a 'board' and do so much regardless, but it's also so damn inefficient and limiting.  Even if I'm likely to stick to the 60 and 90 degree angle manipulators most of the time anyway just because of their general convenience.

...Actually, I bet there's prior art in chemistry, there....

...Google says not really, but...whatever, I'll make do.

...Maybe I should draw from graphics shaders to handle bulk crystal manufacture.  The principles are a lot more - full of uniformity.  And it's not like I couldn't quantum bogosort.

Well.  Not really quantum bogosort,  But, y'know.  Aggressively assert that the atoms shall be arranged thusly.

And apparently I'm surprisingly close to one of the big diamond markets, for all that NYC is, y'know, apparently a magical pit of vipers.  ...I should really work out that crazy idea I had about carbon capture...

...Really, that one's pretty damn simple, with the tools she has on hand nowadays.  Intake CO2, break the C off of it, output O2, pipe the C to the diamond assembler...  Really, what's going to give her the most problems is figuring out when to output the diamond, since the structure just repeats ad infinitum.

There's also the carbon nanotubes idea, though...  It might be easier to start with research applications instead of tipping the synthetic diamond market on its head.

She can practically scrawl that one on a post-it, too.  ...Maybe an index card, instead.  There are two reaction chambers.

...How big are nanotubes, actually...?

(Google says: Answer varies.)

So she could actually make a pretty penny just by creating arbitrary valid configurations at specified lengths...

She's going to start with radius-3 ones, though.

Now to... wander the engineering department between classes?

There's a fox lurking on the quad today, giving off a faint hint of magic.

Hey yeah I had a sniff and that's not some kind of disease spirit, that's a hiveling danger marking. Basically telling fellow hive-members 'this spot is dangerous, avoid'.

So yeah. Hivelings.

She waves at the fox politely.

...Right.  Well, I'm glad they think I'm dangerous, because aside from sheer amperage I'm not sure what I bring to a fight as of yet.  Though I do suppose I've a few ideas.

...Huh.  I took a little sample jar of that marker.  Wonder if I could use it.

And... What's a hiveling, anyway...?

Kind of a bucket term. Basically magical ants, bees, or termites. There's a few common kinds. They're not even necessarily dangerous, just pests. They'll eat unattended magic shit. They're known to kill tentacle monsters and spites and poltergeists sometimes.

What's funny though is that I'm not seeing MORE signs of them. Usually they're pretty easy to sniff out if you find one. And the danger marking doesn't track if you didn't actually DO anything to it.

...Well, I did find it.

But what I find myself wondering is if this isn't a hiveling.  If this is -

Wait, shit, if you're texting me then that magic fox-looking creature can't be you can it?

Lol

You think my kung fu so weak, grasshopper?

She catches the glint of light reflecting off a phone screen from the lounging fox's direction, for a moment.

Oh thank goodness.

Damn near scared the living daylights out of me for a minute there; I was already thinking about impostors.  (Insert Amogus Joke Here.)

...I really need to get a proper minimap or something; if I do that then maybe I can backport IFF out as an independent function, which I need given, like, wards, and the importance of not shredding myself or the maintenance guy upon them.

Anyway.  What I find myself wondering is if it's not a Hiveling, but instead something camouflaged as a Hiveling.  Surely they too have predators/an ecosystem.

...I mean that's not even getting into the question of whether we're dealing with a Rita Skeeter impersonator, but that doesn't quite track - so it's probably more of an offbrand magical Ant-Man, if there's a person involved.  (...I did not need the mental image of the magical equivalent of parasitic wasps, ugh, ew ew ew.  Why do I even come up with these things.)

Unrelated to any of the above - I don't suppose you have the capacity to photosynthesize as one of your many methods of thaumatogenesis?  I'm trying to work out a magic <-> wattage conversion, for various reasons, and solar power's pretty useful just in general.

Well, I still don't want to get TOO involved in this shit.

Semi-retired and all.

It's WEIRD but as far as I'm concerned it's not an apocalypse waiting to happen and probably won't even manage to lastingly harm you.

So, would you like me to tell the local Magical Girl about this anomaly and potential threat, or not? Pros: Introduction on decent terms to them, high-caliber help if it turns out to be something super nasty. Cons: ACAB.

Yeah I'm not on high alert or anything myself.  Yet.  If something else weird starts happening, then I panic.

...Hm.

I actually want to get a close look at their stuff, so, like.  Maybe, actually.  Despite, you know, ACAB.  And besides if the cops are bastards throwing them at gribblies first is the smart choice.

...I really need to go find somewhere that won't mind being a little exploded or on fire.  I doubt I can just book a bomb range....

The cops have training facilities and would be the easiest in short term. I know them well enough to know that, unless you manage to stick your foot up your nose, you could probably borrow them for a little bit.

There's always out-of-the-way dirtlots. I could probably scare one up.

Which the cops are we talking, like, the actual cops cops or the Magic Cops TM?  But yeah I suppose a firing range would be quite sufficient, actually.  Esp. if I can scare up, like, a bit of explosionproofing.

...Hm, I should do lead stripping.  I should really do lead stripping.  Fuck heavy metal poisoning.

The magic cops, the Puchuus and Magical Girls

Isn't literal lead paint mostly taken care of these days?

Bullets are still made of lead.  Oh, and I can de-mercury stuff, too.  I think that's a problem with some fish.

Anyway.  She is just going to...

Get completely distracted from 3D modeling the Store Brand Lightsaber.

Because she's actually had another idea or two.

...It occurs to me, that 1) As far as succubi know, there does not exist a human with no magic, and 2) magic significantly responds to believing in it - as seen in multiple cases so far.

So with that said, I want to see if you can get at what's inside this.  Just...  Clap your hands if you believe.  And then see what you can do with it.  Because as far as my metaphors are concerned, this is the stuff of magic itself on some level.

And in the attachment of an I/O effector she sends direct to OS, she encloses, within a thin screwtop cylinder of gold, some raw quintessence.

I guess that's a 'maybe later' on the magic cops?

It takes a while but OS responds:

wtf

what am i holding

it wiped me the fuck out btw

huge headache

should i be worried???/

To Wren:

Sorry 'bout that, just had Inspiration(tm) hit me, you know how it is.  I don't think we're in a rush?  On the magic cops?  I was kind of figuring that it'd take a minute to set up a meeting, at least.  She's gotta have some kind of day job.

...Do MGs have day jobs actually.  I have no idea.

Also I think I either just got a mundie to do magic (or at least, interact with a magic themself rather than the effect having specific hooks for human interaction) or awakened an Internet friend.

To OS:

It's Quintessence, from Opus Magnum.  In a little gold screwtop thing.  Because I figured that what's basically raw magic-stuff, would make for good...  I dunno even.  But even if you're not capable of magic on your own merits (which just still seems wrong to me) then this should at least be a little bit of something while I work on a better way to make things happen.  Right now I'm thinking about whether/how I could isolate the magic genes from various Lilim and mumble mumble retrovirus.  ...I think the headache is just.  Strain?  I'm not a doctor!  But like you had to Do A Thing with things that aren't used to doing, so.  Could be that.  Consult a medical professional.  ...Are you, by any chance, feeling very dissociated right now?

...Hm.  Actually maybe I should send you a different thing if I want to enable you to, like, use magic ink, in ways somewhat independent of me, or whatever.  One second...

And now that she has established that this can be done, she is going to use this space's entangled sigil to pipe in, and poke out, a magic-ink-filled ballpoint pen.

(...She has some idea of how to make ink in OM terms and real-life terms that will do, here.  ...And she's sticking magicness to it anyway.)

....Maybe more like five minutes, even at full acceleration I have to work smallish.

Slow down okay

I don't need to explode today

Fucking

I have to finish this stupid migration anyway and that will give me time to process

I'm going to try some low-level witchy spells later

I'll let you know if it seems more like 'I'm slightly magic' or 'you did a magic thing that other people can trigger'.