—lab. Lab?? Lab!

yes!!

She grins. 

Gets them every time. Follow me!

She ducks into the stairwell around the tree, and descends through a hidden opening between two roots. Neon-pink runes flicker on along the stone walls of the narrow tunnel: Avalon waves her hand, and the fire goes from them, their burning hearts fading to a gentle glow. 

A few blind turns and twists later, the corridors open up into a vast, vaulted courtyard under the sky. Delicate orchids in a dozen varieties twine up fluted marble columns, filling the air with sweetness: little notecards pinned to the marble give their names in Latin. A tiny cauldron sits on a bunsen burner amid the flagstones: the workbench next to it lies in disarray, springs of brass and copper intermingled with a half-disassembled Xerox machine and a half-done coloring book. On the other side of the cauldron, a dozen squat bottles sit in delicate array, no two identical. Their labels are in English: "Quicksilver." "Peach cider. [SCIENCE ONLY]" "Nitroglycerin."

Behind them sits a bookcase filled with heavy leather tomes and beaten-up paperbacks. (There's also a cuneiform tablet and a pair of papyrus scrolls.) Someone has left the front half of a bicycle lying against it: the basket is filled with copper wire, thumbtacks, and a half-dozen old-style flip-phones. A tangle of rubber hose props it up, keeping it from falling over: the last few inches of its cut-off end have had gold and silver rings carefully squeezed onto them. They look like they might fall into the aquarium underneath the workbench any moment now. 

Against the far side of the workbench, a half-dozen pillows and as many blankets have been carefully fit together into a truly lovely pillow fort: one rejected pillow sits propped against the back of the aquarium, leaking down from a ragged tear along its side. A pile of dirty laundry sits next to it - no, wait, those are discount Halloween costumes, wrapped around a thick bundle of leather belts that must have come from a dozen different thrift stores. A lamp made of five articulated panes of thick, cloudy plexiglass sits atop it, looking almost smug: its companion, a coffee mug filled with glass marbles, seems more reproachful. (Ooh, some of those are steel ball bearings, and that one's painted like the Earth... - later! Come back to it!) 

Behind that, there's a mountain of cardboard boxes, polished-wood display cases, and cheap plastic organizer drawers. A Buddha statuette smiles beatifically from atop a tupperware bowl filled with microchips and grey nerve fiber: the half-open nightstand beneath it is filled with business cards, bouncy balls and slices of agate. The hodgepodge containers fill half the courtyard, at least twelve columns deep and six wide: from somewhere deeper in the stacks, wind-chimes jingle faintly. 

Avalon's eyes flick back to Z, a little smile playing on her lips. Just ask if you need anything specific, alright? 

Holy

fuck.

There’s so much.

y...eah. for sure.

He’s mesmerized by it. This might all have looked like junk to him before — interesting junk, but still junk — but now...it’s possibility. It’s freedom.

It’s a lot to take in, huh? Would you maybe like me to help narrow it down? 

—what’s this stuff...?

He floats over to the container of nerve fiber and computer chips.

Oh, that's a piece of a wonder in progress - biocomputation unit, see how the chips are bound into the nerve fibers? Feel free to steal it though, I haven't tasked it over yet - and don't worry, it's entirely non-sentient, just a different substrate. My own design, only a little Maniacal: mostly I think it's fudging the differences between nerves and wires? 

- uh, anyway, yes. It does really fast parallel processing - or at least it's supposed to, I haven't got around to testing it yet, the nerves only just got to full growth.

nice.

He thinks.

He thinks some more.

...where’s the stuff you use to grow...stuff? because if you’ve got nerve fibers and you can just—splice that in—

He reaches for the tupperware and holds it up to the light.

i’m definitely gonna need a scalpel. not for this thing don’t worry.

If you're going to use the scalpel on yourself, I heavily recommend you let me go fetch one of my Beholden - installing wonders into yourself is never a good idea if you can get somebody else to do it, and I have a decent surgical assistant on loan from my friend at the moment. 

As for stuff - what kind of stuff? Nerves or plants? I can make up a nutrient bath for you in ten minutes if you need specialized meat, but the Maniacal fertilizer's buried in the third row at the moment. 

why isn’t it a good idea? and, uh, yeah, flesh. not plants.

Avalon pulls the aquarium out, and sets it atop the workbench: picking up one of the bottles, she pours out a viscous orange fluid into the bottom of the tank. 

Because you'll be trying to do delicate surgery on parts of your body you can't get at easily while in intense pain. You know, commonsense reasons like that. Also, if you fuck it up you'll have a malfunctioning Wonder implanted in your body.

If I had an automated surgical suite, I'd offer that. I don't have that: I did a full replace so I wouldn't have to keep doing that kind of patchwork incremental upgrade, at least in part. I do have somebody who can keep you from bleeding out when you, I dunno, graft body armor to your rib cage or whatever. Not my field of expertise, to be honest.

The aquarium is a quarter full now: the thin stream of goop from the palm-sized bottle in Avalon's hand shows no sign of stopping. 

but

i really want to.

...

...but i won’t because you have a person for that.

If it's really that important to you, I guess I can spot you. Just keep in mind this could be a Staunen fixation thing. 

no, it’s—

He starts to pace the room, picking up copper wire and cider and carefully plucking an orchid petal.

can you imagine doing that yourself — opening up, uh. your arm, staying awake through it, being aware of it the whole time, feeling yourself becoming something new, the fucking pain—

He goes back for the mercury and an old flip phone.

Yes.

this isn’t a genius thing, is it.

- I think you jumped to the wrong conclusion, there. 

I'm just annoyed because you're assuming that in my seventyish years of experience as a Genius, including a decade in a warzone, I have never had to perform surgery on myself. 

oh.

oh.

He fights down the urge to ask her what it was like.

fuck. i’m sorry.

She smiles. 

I'm still here. That's the greatest victory I could ever possibly win. 

- she shrugs sheepishly, and caps the bottle again. The aquarium's now half full of nutrient goo.

Well, uh, not literally, but - you get what I mean, right?

- and on another note, what would you like grown? It's a little different depending on the cell type - nerves, muscles, bone? I can approximate more complex organs if I need to, but they're a bitch to get right -

yeah.

yeah, i feel that.

nerves would be great.

Most of us do. You don't get Geniuses out of people who haven't suffered, not as a general rule. It doesn't create the... desire to reject the world, the Catalyst that lets us survive Mania and tame it. 

She taps a few drops of silvery fluid into the orange goo, and it starts to cloud and thicken. She stares at it intently, and drags one finger along its surface in a delicate swirl: the gel beneath her finger stiffens, bundling together and turning greyish, and she smiles slightly. 

Well, according to this madgirl, at least.

She prods the new bundle of ropy flesh once more, and nods to herself: her grin resurfaces as she looks back up at Z. 

Your nerves should be ready in another seven or eight minutes, now. Do you wanna spoil me, or am I going to have to watch and learn?

sounds like a good theory to me.

He looks over the nerves.