A pale twelve-year-old girl sits in an ostensibly-soundproofed back room, and smiles a little at the lyrics drifting through the wall. Some things don't change much.

This isn't, strictly speaking, his scene. He straddles the punk/goth line a little too closely for that. But the rumors were way too good for him to give this club a miss. The usual vampire-subculture wannabes are one thing, but ones that actually go ahead and bite? That's his style. So he put on a little more leather and changed out his earrings and went.

He watches the band, but he's looking around him much more than the other patrons are.

If he's looking for a vampire, that woman over there with the flat expression, blood red hair, and aura of "don't waste my time" is probably a better candidate than most.

Looks good to him. Although...you can't really tell, with goth clubs. Everybody looks a little like a vampire.

He pushes his way expertly through the crowd and approaches her.

"Hey."

She looks at him. 

"Hm?"

"There's some kind of vampire thing going on here, right?"

It's probably sort of gauche to just say it outright like that. Oh well.

That slight eyebrow raise might indicate surprise. 

"Oh. You're one of the LARPers?" 

Aww, no.

"I mean, I wouldn't go that far. I just heard..."

He touches the side of his neck.

If this is just a bunch of people pretending to bite, he's gonna be so disappointed.

The woman stares at him flatly.

"Third door on the left in the back, the one marked Employees Only. Say Soph sent you."

Sweet.

"Thanks. I owe you one."

He grins with obvious excitement and heads for the back as fast as he can without looking incredibly suspicious. He still looks a little suspicious.

Grungy hallways that might have been stylish once. More expressionless security types. And, after a few turns through the corridors, a small private lounge, more or less soundproofed, with a twelve-year-old girl perched on a huge leather chair. 

She looks up at him and frowns. In the background, Angelspit moves on to a new song. 

I love the way that you sweat when you lie,
Hearing you beg always makes me smile, 
It turns me on when your honey starts to drip
As I put on the thumbscrews, and tighten their grip.

She sighs. "Why are you here, exactly?"

...wait, what.

"I, uh...was looking for the. Vampire thing. Wherever that's happening."

The song in the background is not improving the experience of finding a 12-year-old where he was expecting...anything other than that.

"I see. And you expected a vampire thing because...?"

"...heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy. Who had some great bite marks."

He's beginning to think he's walked into some kind of trap.

She sighs. "And you're... into being bitten...?"

"Well, uh, not that specifically?"

The tone implies 'but, if you bit me, I would be into it'.

"...aren't you way too young to get in here?"

The corner of her mouth quirks upward.

"Your hand." 

"My...hand?"

He holds it up reflexively, as if questioning whether it really belongs to him.

She rolls her eyes. "Give me your hand."

"Oh." Right, he's an idiot.

He holds it out.

She takes his hand, then pulls with sudden strength, far beyond that of a twelve-year-old girl. Dipping her head, she bites down hard on his exposed wrist, fangs piercing skin.

He stumbles forward, and doesn't even have time to ask what she's doing before there's a sharp stab of pain in his wrist.

A few things click into place in his mind.

1) She's not twelve.

2) Those are real fangs.

3) This isn't an edgy vampire subculture thing.

He's...going to put his worries about that on hold until he can stop thinking mostly about how fucking amazing her teeth feel in his arm.

He sinks slowly down to his knees, keeping his wrist held up for her.

A few moments later, she takes her fangs from his wrist, and grabs his chin, lifting his face to stare into his eyes. 

"That was for the 'too young' comment. Now, listen closely..."

He was going to object in some way, for a moment -- at the very least, to tell her that that wasn't exactly a punishment -- but she's tilting his face up, holding his gaze, and...

He can't remember, suddenly, what he was going to say. He can't imagine why he'd ever want to look away. She was so strong, when she pulled him forward, and the way she moves him lets him know that he's beneath her. She's beautiful, untouchable, perfect...

He would nod, if he could. Instead he just stares up at her, completely mesmerized.

Looking into her eyes is like falling.

"I was never-" 

A shockwave sweeps the room, followed by screams from the club outside. The red-haired woman barges into the room, smoke billowing from her skin, and grits out a report: "Hunters. Sunlight. Total compromise, serious breach risk." 

The vampires' gaze snaps up, breaking the spell of her eyes. "Damn it. Clean and contain the breach." 

She stalks from the room, her walk the casual lope of a predator. 

The red-haired woman turns, and points a pistol directly at Kai-zi's head.

She was never--

She was never--

He wakes up and there's a gun.

Slowly, shakily, he raises his hands.

She's going to kill him. He's going to die.

He imagines the hole in his head, gore splattered on the wall behind him, the blank fear frozen on his face when they find him. He imagines what it will feel like to have metal crack his skull and rip through his brain. What's the sensation you feel when the place that gives you sensation is destroyed?

(He tries very hard not to find this erotic.)

His tongue is too heavy in his mouth but he speaks anyway.

"I– please–..."

A very loud BANG, a blinding light, and a whumph of concussive force knocks him from his feet.

Where is he now? He reaches blindly out and feels leather beside him, which means...the chair. Somewhere next to the chair.

He can't hear anything but the whine in his ears, and can barely see through the spots. Ironically, the only thing keeping him from panicking is the searing pain in his shoulder.

He scrambles to turn around -- he can't see much, but something is better than nothing.

A braid of neon-blue hair almost smacks him in the face. Someone says something. A tattooed hand grabs his and yanks him more or less to his feet, then a needle sinks into his bitten arm and wow he sure is getting to experience a lot of new sensations today. This one feels like his insides are melting.

Wow, this is sure something he was unprepared for!

He feels like he's going to throw up, and he's pretty sure that when he does all of his organs will come out his mouth.

His legs almost buckle underneath him, but...at least his head isn't swimming quite as much?

He is having a very bad night.

"...whah...the fuck."

Oh, he could almost hear himself say that. Progress!

The braid's owner pats him on the cheek. "Hiiiiiii, friendly neighbourhood vampire hunter, try not to die, thanks!" 

He grabs at her arm, shaking his head to try to clear the ringing from his ears somehow. He still feels like he's about to vomit.

"What'd you even...shoot me up with?"

Her face swims into view: off to the side, something growls. The girl casually fires a bolt of... ball lightning??? at it from a chunky piece of scrap shaped vaguely like a pistol, and tries to shake off his hand. 

"Listen, you should maybe not grab at the girl who's trying to fight vampires right now."

He takes his hand off her reluctantly. He feels like if he stops touching anything he'll just float off into the ether.

Thank god he got grazed in the shoulder. That's something to focus on at least.

"Not grabbing! I'm chill now! What did you put in my body."

"Well, that's a long story, I call it tough juice, it's a complicated blend of nanobots, stimulants, hormones, and good old fashioned heroin except don't worry it's not addictive, I was careful and it does completely different things in the aggregate comp-" 

A giant wolf bounds from the cloud of smoke to the left of her, all snarling fangs and teeth. She backhands it across its muzzle with her gun, and it collapses to the floor with a buzz of electricity. 

"Neonates."

He loves weird shit but this is really hard to keep up with.

“Uh, okay, heroin? But it’s not—how does that even work? And—”

Oh shit. He jumps back from the wolf as she smacks it to the ground.

“Neonates?”

"New vampires. Think they're tough, especially the shapeshifty ones. Dunno their proper name, their biology - well, it's not biology, they're dead, but their physiology - is fascinating, I've repurposed some of that for the metabolic jumpstarter you've got going there, but -" 

The wolf raises its head, and she clubs it back down again with her gun. "Stay! Good dog." 

She looks at Kai-Zi and frowns. "Um, did you see where the older one went? You've got a fresh bite, they can't have gone far..."

“Uh...she went out the door, but I dunno what happened after that, I was sort of...”

He waves his hands a little.

“...out of it.”

"Yeaaaaaaah they do that. Okay thanks bye!" 

And off she goes down the corridor.

--oh, come on!

He runs after her.

Jinx is waiting around the next corner: as z comes around, she clotheslines him. 

"Yeah no, you have blood all over you, you're fucking vampire bait, staying here is a shit plan for you. Sit down and think about your life."

Ow. Seriously?

He goes down like a sack of bricks and coughs on the floor. He feels like he should have been able to stop in time, but he also feels like he's wearing a backpack full of lead. It's a lot harder to control his movements than it was ten minutes ago.

He sits down and thinks, but not necessarily about his life.

What did she stick him with? If it were just the heavy limbs and the weakness he'd get it, but his shoulder has definitely stopped bleeding faster than it reasonably should. What did she say, that it had heroin in it? That she reverse-engineered this from vampires somehow? 

It's so hard to grab a hold of – the more he tries to understand what's happening the more it slips out of his reach.

She looks at him. 

"...shit. Fucking shit." 

Casually, she tosses her gun at him. "Catch."

He barely manages to catch it, but he does. He would like his reflexes back as soon as possible.

As soon as he does, he stares down at the gun. This...barely looks from the outside like it should work at all, let alone produce the fantastic effect it does.

"...this shoots lightning. For some fucking reason."

He sounds a little dazed.

Jinx fixes him with a smile that's three shades too wide for sanity. 

"Look at it. Figure it out. Why does it shoot lightning?"

He never once thinks to tell her he's not a scientist.

His fingers scratch at the surface of the gun, trying to pry a panel away to expose the insides.

"It works...because..."

He feels something like vertigo, the dizzy rush of tipping into the abyss.

The panel comes away easily beneath his fingers, and something stings his hand in almost exactly not the way that a spark would.

Jinx leans in close enough for him to smell her breath. "Because I'm a fucking genius, that's why. Because physics do not fucking apply when I'm in the room. Because I'm the girl who can turn three pieces of scrap metal and a battery into a lightning gun. Because I'm Jinx - that's Dr. Explosions to you." 

She rips out one of his earrings, and twists it in her fingers, once, twice, working in his blood. When she opens her hand, a steel-blue grasshopper bounds up onto Kai-zi's shoulder. 

"You can keep the gun, I think it's gotten attached to you."

...It's fucking empty.

It's just batteries and scrap.

He stares up her and barely even makes a noise when she rips his earring out, despite the pain. He watches her hands as blood trickles down his jaw.

Then the grasshopper lands quietly on his shoulder, and he loses it.

(He's not sure exactly what he lost.)

He laughs, just quietly at first. His head is buzzing.

"This...this is fucking incredible."

He stares at the grasshopper, at the empty gun, at her. Nothing works like he thought it did, does it? Another laugh bubbles up out of him, charged with the same knot of energy that thrums now in his chest.

Blood drips off his chin, and the air smells suddenly like ozone.

He lets the insect step onto his finger and holds it out in front of him. The world doesn't work like he thought it did at all, does it? It's so much more...

"...beautiful!"

Jinx bends down, and kisses him atop his forehead. 

"Go on then, have fun." 

She thumbs a device on her belt, and disappears. 

He'll find her again someday. He doesn't think he can follow her now, but he'll find her.

He looks down at the gun. If he stretches his mind just right, moves the lens through which he sees the world just so, he can almost understand it: two plates of scrap metal, two conductors between which to conduct and amplify and contain energy, never mind that's not how it's supposed to work. Now, if he just adds some kind of liquid, maybe a suspension of metals--

He digs his fingers into the tear in his ear and splatters the blood into the compartment, then forces the plate he ripped away back into place. As it charges it starts to whine and crackle.

Slowly, he pulls himself to his feet, and makes for the closest exit.

He emerges into the backstage area, which at the moment is vacant of everything save a few amplifiers, part of the stage lighting, and an abandoned laptop.

Oh, yes. This is perfect.

He should, logically, be mostly concerned with getting out of here. Instead he starts to work.

Dragging all the amplifiers into one spot is easy enough. Getting the lights unhooked and down to the ground, in his current state, is hard, but he manages it. Once he has his pile of parts, he grabs the laptop and sets it next to him on the ground.

(He can do anything. He knows he can do anything.)

He thinks first about finding Jinx...but, no. That's thinking too small, much too small for the incredible world he's just opened up.

He has to find them all. Every single one. There's more than just him and her, he knows it, and he has to know how many.

He digs in his pocket for the multi-tool he brought with him – thank god he takes this thing everywhere – and sets to work tearing one of the amps to pieces.

About halfway through his disassembly, his fingers lighten, his hands steady, his pulse quickens, and he feels the urge to vomit again. Whatever Jinx did to his system is wearing off. 

Oh. Not great.

He pauses in his deconstruction to take off his shirt and slash it into strips with his knife, wrapping and tying one around his bitten wrist and the other around the wound in his shoulder.

Then he runs to the corner to puke into a trash can. No big deal, though.

He finds someone's water bottle on a shelf and rinses his mouth before he gets back to work.

The further he deconstructs the amp, the more the reconstruction takes shape in his mind. Each piece slots into place in his vision. 

But then he's finished, and there are parts still missing.

He only looks at the laptop for a moment before he's cracking the case open. The tiny screws inside are hard to deal with, but peeling apart glued-together parts is fairly easy.

The earring-grasshopper falls off his shoulder, twisting apart into three strands of metal. 

Aww. Good night, sweet grasshopper.

He picks up the strands, twirling them in his fingers, and tucks them into his pocket...

And then he starts to build.

He twists wires together and splits cables and bends metal according to the picture in his mind. It all holds together so much better than it should, without even a soldering iron to stick it in place.

He has no idea how much time passes while he works. Somewhere during the process, his creation ceases to be a pile of metal scrap and starts to be something else entirely.

The whole thing fits beautifully into the case of the amp, and the screen of the laptop is easily affixed to the top. A quarter-inch plug attaches it to his phone.

He crosses his fingers and plugs it in.

It wails as it starts to work, a screeching, almost pained sound. He just laughs in delight and waits for the first coordinates to start to appear.

(He doesn't even know exactly what this thing is looking for. He just knows that it will find more people like her--and like him, now.)

Coordinates appear, neatly marked. The device itself. Him. The gun. A pink-haired girl standing on a roof nearby. The device's map of the block pulls back to a map of the city, then the country, then the globe, patterned with lines and clusters and whorls of coordinates, some registering individual signatures of Maniacal artifacts or people or... indeterminate: some marking gatherings and congretings of Maniacal energy - buildings, organizations, places. It's a flood, a torrent of data, more of an answer than any search engine could have produced. Hell, more of an answer than the entire US military could produce. 

It's beautiful. It's so fucking beautiful.

He grabs the handle on the back of the amp with one hand and the lightning gun with the other, and starts to lug the thing towards what he thinks might be an exit. He has to find that closest mark first. He has to share this. He has to know more.

On his screen, the pink haired girl looks directly at him - then she sits down to wait patiently.

...ok, that's some horror movie shit.

He walks on anyway.

She taps at the screen of a tablet she's carrying, then holds it up to the "camera." 

You do realize you just pinged every Genius alive, right? 

"I have no idea what that means."

Lug. Lug.

"...or whether you can hear me."

The text on the tablet changes instantly. 

I have a scanner like yours implanted behind my right ear, of course I can hear you. Would you like some answers? Maybe some help transporting that thing? 

"...you can make one of these things that small?"

His mind whirls with the possibility for a minute before he calms down enough to answer.

"Both would be good! And maybe some help implanting cool stuff in my body."

Well, it's not quite the capabilities of the one you're lugging there - I don't have the grounding in the Axiom - but it's more than good enough for this sort of simple communication. I could do telepathy if you'd rather not talk to the air, but I prefer to ask before trying that. 

Could you please shut your scanner off for a moment? The ongoing pings are getting very distracting, not to mention the screaming. 

"Yeah, I don't know why it does...that."

...

"Wait. Telepathy? Show me."

Just as he asks, he reaches the limit of the amp's power cord, and it pulls out of the backstage wall. The screaming stops abruptly.

He knew there was something he was forgetting.

He sets down the thing momentarily to pull in the cord and wind it up.

An image of a lozenge-shaped implant appears in his mind, next to a small blue notebook with the title "Echo: A Device For Polite Communications." As he considers the notebook, it flips open, and the implant disassembles itself neatly in his mind, showing an intricately grown network of nerve tissue spliced with plastic-encased capacitors and what looks like some form of purple ivy. 

Convenient, isn't it?

As soon as the cord is vaguely bundled, he stops to drink in the images.

it's amazing.

He touches a spot behind his ear thoughtfully.

why "polite"?

Speaking aloud makes noise when you don't have to make noise. Keeping yourself small is polite. 

...okay.

You know what? You do you, pink-haired girl.

He grabs the scanner again and, in a minute, finally makes it out the door.

The pink haired girl descends from the sky and alights in front of him. She lays a hand on his scanner, and picks it up with two fingers. It seems completely natural: gentle touch, one smooth motion, and now the scanner is the size of a coin and sitting neatly in her palm. 

She offers it back to Kai-zi. 

This will last about an hour before I need to refresh it. 

He takes it and holds it out in front of him in awe.

"It's so cute!"

Whoops, that was probably "rude", huh. He tries to think at her, the same way he did before.

how'd you do that?

She giggles. 

I'm a Doctor of Metaptropi: material and form are mine to play with. Want another demonstration?

shit, yes. fire away.

She picks up a rock from the street, then puts it into his hand, clasping his fingers around it. It's cold against his skin. 

Ready?

so ready.

She moves her hand away. 

The pebble is a lot heavier than it was before, and also a lot shinier. 

In the sea without lees,

stands the bird of Hermes, 

Eating her wings variable, 

And she makes herself yet stable. 

When all her feathers are from her gone, 

She standeth still here as a stone.

We are the new alchemists of this age, you and I. 

She smiles slightly.

Holy shit, okay, that's definitely gold.

He stares at the nugget in his palm.

this is unreal.

if you can do this, and she could make the grasshopper...

What can he do?

It costs to fix it, make it stay. But that is real gold. I can teach you if you're willing to learn.

...i want to know everything.

He is probably being entirely literal about that.

Staunen, are you? 

She tilts her head, and offers her hand.

Well then, come with me. 

i have no idea what that means!

He grabs her hand.

She leads him down a nearby alleyway, stepping lightly over discarded bottles. 

Every Genius has a catalyst. An emotion that colours their work, threaded into every nerve and circuit. People like you and her, who are all wrapped up in the wonder of it, we call Staunen. 

I have a different Catalyst. 

She stops at a nearby wall, passes her hand over it, and something shimmers, shifts, aging bricks replaced by marble archway. Beyond, a garden rests in silence, lavender flowers lit by moon.

A different reason for it all. 

He walks forward towards the arch without thinking about it.

what's your reason?

She looks up at the moon. 

I want the world to stop being so terrible.

...sounds pretty good to me.

If circumstances had been different, he might have had a very different catalyst.

Trouble is it's so very big.

well...good thing there are a lot of us. it looked like, anyway.

yes and no

genii and their creations aren't generally the most stable. We're called mad scientists for a reason. 

Incidentally, under no circumstances should you ever let a non-genius witness you using your Wonders in an obvious way, and you should really especially never let any of them touch or, ugh, fiddle with them.

Huh.

but...she had to show me her stuff for me to realize...

He sends a few images of his meeting with Jinx.

can anybody be like us? 

No. They can't. The thing behind our eyes - the thing that lets us make wonders - it can't live in most people's heads. When it tries, it burns away their ability to... have goals or opinions or desires of their own, to want things. They become echoes of whoever the strongest Genius nearby is, utterly beholden to them.

You were very lucky.

...oh.

On the one hand, he does feel sort of...special, being one of the few. On the other hand...

it's...dangerous, then. to everyone else.

Yes. Our devices... go wrong in the hands of those untouched by the lightning. They seem to lack the instinct for how to make a wonder function; within five minutes it will be badly broken. If you're very lucky, it won't break in a way that endangers everyone around you. 

He nods.

...i would've tried to show people if you hadn't told me.

Yes. You can make wonders that are relatively safer, but...

She shrugs.

...sort of lonely, probably.

He starts to inspect their surroundings so he can think about that instead.

Wait, what am I doing, I haven't shown you my SECRET LAIR!!!

The pink-haired girl whips a tablet out of literally nowhere, and taps in three short commands. 

The garden... folds neatly upwards, like the world's largest piece of origami. The lilacs in their flowerbeds go undisturbed, casually sidling into wall boxes: the bridge across the stream repurposes itself into an intricate gate of the same delicate cherrywood. The central tree cozies itself into the centre of a spiral staircase. 

With a delicate click, the paper-thin marble walls meet a roof that wasn't there five seconds ago. 

The pink-haired girl opens the door, a shimmer of twisted light coiling beneath her fingers as she leans casually against the fragile stone. 

Inside, a set of overstuffed armchairs cozy up around an indoor pond: consoles swathed in purple ivy and dense bundles of nerve fibre sit camouflaged among the lilacs. 

She grins. 

Welcome to Avalon. 

She bows elaborately, putting three flourishes of her hand into it. 

Maniacal Girl Avalon Sureguard invites you within. You are advised not to break anything. I may be cute, but I think you understand just how seriously fucked you'd be if you messed with me here, right?~

- by the way, the body's custom. I did a full replace. It's been... fifty something years since I claimed this Bardo? And I've been more or less fourteen for that whole time. Oh, sometimes I need to replace a bit, but Metaptropi's great for keeping spares to hand... 

She looks at him. 

- I'm not freaking you out, right? Sorry, I - I don't get out much.

this is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me, do not be sorry.

He gazes around the room, enraptured.

your body's custom – you can do that?

Avalon flops down in a very comfy chair, and grins. (The... green leather? Has a bit of a glossy shine to it, and flexes a bit in ways leather usually does not. It appears she is using some form of Abomination of Science for maximum coziness.)

Oh, not sanely. It’s a known instability risk for people like us - the more you move away from the kinds of things most people consider normal, the higher risk you have of getting caught up in your own genius. I just felt it was worth taking the chance, you know?

I’m not the best at the kind of detail work I’ve got going on here - I have some mad medicine, Exelixi, but not enough to rebuild my whole body from scratch. This - she gestures downwards at herself - is a commission from a friend of mine. Technically it’s a braindead clone and “I” am a computer chip implanted in its frontal cortex, but really the distinction only matters if someone gets out a knife and goes digging. Which would be foolhardy and stupid to attempt, given that I am a doctor of Metaptropi and no longer care about plebian concepts like “volume”. 

Avalon casually produces a brass wand covered in neon-pink runes in her free hand, then vanishes it again. 

Anyway. I ought to give you the intro lecture. Ahem... let me see here. 

Congratulations, you just Catalyzed. You’re a Staunen, and your wonders will be born of curiosity and, er, wonder. You’ll have a natural edge when building scanners, communicators - anything intended to help you learn. I’m a Klagen, also known as a Doomsayer or Cassandra: I catalyzed with the emotion of Sorrow, and all my works are stamped with it. Though my Catalyst pushes me towards wonders that improve and heal, I’m instead a doctor of Metaptropi, the axiom of Change. That means I can turn lead into gold, this garden into a secret lab, and thin air into a deadly maniacal wand. 

I’m what’s known as a Rogue - not affiliated with the Peerage, not affiliated with the Lemurians. I’m sane, more or less. We’re all a bit... off-kilter. As a Klagen, I get depressive episodes: as a Staunen, you’ll likely experience fixations on trivial things. 

It’s very important that you not begin to think that you understand how your Wonders work. All Geniuses have that drive to try to Understand The Paradox. Don’t. Let it be. If you stare too deeply at it, you’ll go Unmada or even Illuminate. 

- Oh, yes, definitions. Unmada are Geniuses who have a theory they think works. There’s a personality pattern, common to all of us, where - belief in an answer gets sticky. Before long you’re kidnapping people to rant at them about your theories and destroying inconvenient evidence that contradicts you. 

Geniuses who go mad - who stop remembering how to be human - turn Illuminate. You know the feeling you got when you were working on the scanner? How it was the only thing that mattered in the world, for a little while? The Illuminated are like that all the time. They stop caring about anything other than “what happens if I do this? What about this?” And then someone has to go put them down, because they start asking questions like “what if I fused everyone in New York into one giant shambling mass? What philosophical insights into the nature of individuality might that give me??” 

With me so far?

Wow this is a lot to process. He takes a seat in another very comfy chair.

i, uh...i think.

He has so many questions, but he can only ask one at a time, so after a minute of struggling, he chooses:

where do i even fit into this?

Usually newly-Catalyzed Geniuses are - apprenticed - to the Genius who helped them Break Through. However... Jinx is not the kind of Genius who would be a good mentor. She's Unmada, for a start. And I think you got an idea of the kind of recklessness she gets up to, given what happened to you. 

That's why I turned up: as one of the few stable Geniuses in the city, I have a dedicated Oracle Machine that alerts me to new breakthroughs. A little covert observation, and I decided to intervene before Lemuria or the Peerage showed up. You'll probably get offers from both within the next few days. 

The Peerage are the... not the good ones, both sides have their black sheep, but the sane ones. Relatively. As the saying goes, "we're all mad here": the Peerage are the geniuses who know they're mad and are trying their best to compensate. I'd be a member if I felt it was worth keeping up the subscription - the local chapter is politically weak, and I'm not comfortable taking a stance against the local Lemurians. 

"Who are the Lemurians?" So glad you asked. They're a collection of Unmada, loosely organized for mutual protection, under the delusion that together they're going to develop a Unified Theory of Genius where every single Lemurian's personal pet theory is simultaneously true. The local leader goes by Dr. Realist: he's a Technomatic, an Unmada who thinks that Wonders work because the entire universe is a simulation. 

He's also an extremely powerful Unmada, which... has effects of its own. I don't want to freak you out too much here, but I guess I need to explain Bardos, Manes and Unmada Fields now. Seeing as you're currently in a Bardo talking to a Mane.

She sighs, and gets up out of her chair. 

I'm going to use my holodisplay for this rather than just beaming concepts into your brain: while my telepathy is convenient, it's not tactile and spatial the way I want out of this. Plus I think you've had enough weird today for several lifetimes, plus I just don't get to use the thing enough.

She taps her tablet, and a luminescent blue simulacrum of the city appears, hanging in the air between the cozy chairs. Leaning in, she spreads it apart with her hands, zooming in to the club where Z was a few minutes ago. 

Here's your vampire den. We'll get back to other supernaturals later - right now we're focusing on Geniuses and things that run on our rules. Yes, there are things that "run on our rules" and things that don't. Let me give you the latest on Theory of Inspiration - though do keep in mind that I'm a Genius and therefore my Pet Theory is almost certainly wrong. 

Alright, so. "Inspiration" is the thing that makes Geniuses Geniuses: you'll hear some people call Geniuses "Inspired", but I tend to avoid that since it sounds too close to "Illuminated" for my taste. I prefer "Maniacal" as the adjective, which then makes the Thing We Have "Mania." 

Mania seems to behave a little like electricity in some ways. It can be stored, transferred, and harnessed to produce effects. You and I, as Geniuses, are natural generators of Mania: we can produce it by engaging in significant cognitive effort, though my experiments seem to indicate that there are significant diminishing returns after about the twelfth hour of work per day in my case, I haven't investigated with others, maybe you can help with that - 

Sorry, I'm getting off track. Mania. 

Geniuses produce Mania, but we're not the only things that do. Most people generate trace amounts of Mania whenever they're under significant cognitive load: analysis and hypothesis generation seem to be good candidates for where it comes from, but anything involving this science is almost hopelessly garbled by observer error, so take that with a huge grain of salt. What we are certain of is that Mania is produced in very noticeable quantities when people actually change their minds.

She smiles. 

Can you see where I'm going with this?

so–when i realized that impossible things could actually happen–and nothing i knew before was real–

- huh. You know, I’d never actually considered that before, but it makes a lot of sense - Breakthrough as a rejection of the world as it is - and then the majority of people would be Beholden because they can’t let go of their old worldview, and so the Mania just keeps contradicting them until their ability to have a worldview stops working? Interesting. I should drop a line to the Fellowship, see if we can find anyone who had a breakthrough that involved acceptance of the world... 

- Sorry! The Fellowship does Mad Sociology. I’d have been a doctor of Epikrato or Automata if I had a weaker stance against slavery. Uh, those are the axioms of control and self-awareness, respectively. Yes, you can do death robots. It’s not a good idea, but it’s possible! 

... so, uh, yes. Where I was actually going. The question I wanted you to ask was: “So what happens when there’s a revolution? When a whole bunch of people change their minds, all at once?” And as a side note: “What about empiricism? What does the existence of a whole philosophy dedicated to falsifying ideas mean, in a world where Mania exists?”

He thought of something interesting!

This fills him with incredible joy.

–wait–what about slavery?

There are geniuses out there smart enough to make intelligent beings and stupid enough to assume that their creations will not have any preferences they dislike. 

There are also ones who do mind control, but they tend to get slapped down quickly.

well, fuck them.

what about the question you wanted me to ask?

Anything the world gives up on, anything the world decides is false - Mania hates that, it wants the impossible to exist. And so it tries to make it true.

That's where places like this come from. Tiny utopias, trying to exist in a world where they can't, not really. I think this was actually a cult's promised heaven of gardens, before it broke up - and then the Mania latched on to it, made it real, or as close to real as it could manage. We had an invasion of Martians back in 1894 when "the valleys of mars are actually irrigation canals" was disproven. 

Every lost cause and impossible dream has a few Manes - fictive beings - or Bardos - impossible places - associated with it. By cloning myself into a new body, something that ought to be impossible by modern science, I made myself into one as well. Sasquatch is out there. The Luminiferous Aether? You can go swimming in it.

Not all of them survive, though. Any Mane or Bardo is - not necessarily parasitic, but it needs a source of Mania to keep going. As a Genius, I can keep this Bardo alive, be its power supply so long as it doesn't get too large - but there are far fewer Geniuses than there are Bardos or Manes. Most of them don't last. 

The ones that do... are often ugly. Mars is still out there, though we're at peace now: the Luminiferous Aether hosts wakeboarding competitions: but there's also...

She takes a deep breath, despite not talking using her mouth. 

- who's the most repudiated, most influentially, spectacularly wrong person you can think of? What false dream almost conquered the world, before it was slapped down? 

He listens rapt up til the end. This is beautiful – this is exactly how the world should work, these impossible dreams becoming reality –

But then.

...are there fucking nazi monsters.

When the final nail was driven into the coffin of the Nazi regime, when their whole edifice of “scientific” racism came tumbling down... that was a shockwave. That was bigger than aliens on Mars not existing. 

Simultaneously, the Nazis were proven to not have any functioning “wunderwaffe”, to not have found the Lance of Loginus, and to be a bunch of pseudoscientific occultists grasping at straws to try and win the war by any means they had left.

And so a fucking huge Bardo sprang into existence. The Fourth Reich, an alternate Europe where Hitler won, where the Holocaust was justified, where - 

Avalon’s hands clasp together, and twist against each other until they tremble. She squeezes her eyes shut tightly, and grits her back teeth. 

She lets out a hissed breath. 

- let me finish, this is important. 

We could see it coming. We had been unprepared for the Martian invasion - nothing of that scale had happened before. Before the telegraph, news travelled too slowly to create that kind of shockwave event. Though it was theorized, we badly misjudged the potential impact. The fall of Nazi Germany? We knew exactly what was coming, and we had years to prepare. 

It was in the middle of World War Two, mind you, so we weren’t exactly full strength: still, we got our shit together. For the first time in history, the Lemurians and the Peerage fought together side-by-side. We had our Wonders: the Fourth Reich had the Thule Society, Manes formed in the image of occult Nazi “superscience” and the “pure” Aryan race. They were stronger, tougher, smarter, actually better than normal humans, because remember, the Fourth Reich was a world where scientific racism actually worked. Some of them were Geniuses, or close enough to pass. I don’t know if they were real people or made up whole cloth. I don’t fucking care. 

We were outnumbered and outgunned. They lost anyway. The Maniac Storm of the Axis surrender died away, and the rank and file began to starve - so they started kidnapping Geniuses and particularly brilliant mundanes, to... feed on their Mania. That gave them supply lines we could disrupt, sources of power we could destroy. We tore apart the Bardo that protected them, smashed the “Fourth Reich” and freed the Manes that were created to be victims in it. The Thulians survived, but only by becoming an insurgency. 

We burned them out. Leaf by leaf, branch by branch, root by root. It broke Lemuria’s power and cost us an entire Foundation of the Peerage - the Progenitors, the bio-tinkerers. They were - infected.

The display shifts, becoming a red-glowing swastika. Avalon slashes the flat edge of her hand through it, and fragments of holographic glass spray across the room before it dissolves completely. 

We did it anyway.

Mane Hitler was killed in 1954, and we got the last of his backups and clones in 1957. The head of the Thule Society was executed later that same year. As far as we know, the last original Thulian Genius was killed in 1966: we spent another five years destroying Mania-generating artifacts that had fallen into their hands, as well as still-functioning works of Thulian Science. The last confirmed detection of a Thulian Mane or Wonder was in 1972. I was there. I helped. 

We don’t know for sure that we got them all. We probably didn’t. But whatever fragments of them are left, they’re lying low for now. 

Some dreams aren’t invited back.

good. good, that they're fucking gone.

thank you.

does anybody ever   end up in places like that? without meaning to?

Bardos are very hard to accidentally stumble into. With six billion people in the world, it does happen, but in general most of them stumble right back out again just as fast. 

There's a certain level of background predation - maybe 1% of the missing-persons cases these days are "got eaten by a Mane" - but we try our best to keep things under control. We're weaker now than we were - even after forty years, the scars are still there, the Progenitors are only rebuilding now - but we do our best. 

That's what the Peerage and Lemuria are about, in large part. None of us wants to go Illuminate, and one of the best ways is to be alone for too long. That's - part of why I bothered to come talk to you, honestly. I have - a couple stray beholden - but they don't count as people, not the, you know, the real way. 

She trails off.

...sorry, I've been a giant wet blanket, haven't I. Fucking Nazis, welcome to the world of Mania, lovely to meet you, aren't you having fun?

...no, it’s okay. it’s good stuff to know.

and i’d want to talk to somebody about this shit, too.

He smiles, a little awkward but sincere.

not like i need a lot of help to see the fun parts.

One last big warning, and then I'll stop being a wet blanket, alright? I need to tell you about Unmada Fields so you can recognize one when you see it. 

She brings up the image of the city streets again. 

If you start believing that you have the answer, that you know how mad science works, you'll start generating a sort of half-Bardo around yourself. The world will conspire to prove you right: it'll nudge things towards your aesthetics, sweep away evidence against your delusions. 

If you start noticing that the world around you is suddenly much more the way you'd personally like it to be, come here immediately. You've gone Unmada, and you need to get as much Mania out of your system as possible before it solidifies. The longer you leave it, the more it'll convince you, but if you can get to me I can help you get through it safely.

There's more, of course, but... 

She flicks off the hologram, and hefts her tablet. 

Would you like to see my lab?

He nods.

i will—

—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.

 What...was he planning to do, exactly.

A woman with iridescent hair barges into the room, a long white labcoat trailing behind her as she strides out along the flagstones. 

"Hey, Avalon! I thought I'd find you here." 

She looks sidelong at Z. 

"- who's the new kid?"

"–oh, hey."

He looks up from the growing tissue.

"I'm S–uh. I'm..."

He considers.

"Kai-zi Nothing."

She offers a hand, her eyes shifting a luminescent green. 

"December Morning-glory. Pleasure to meet you. New Genius?"

"Just Catalyzed this morning," Audrey confirms. 

"How'd you guess?"

He takes her hand and shakes it with the air of someone who is really not used to shaking hands but is trying his very best.

She squeezes his hand, then abruptly shifts her grip to grab his forearm in a hand-clasp: she hums appreciatively. 

"Good musculature you've got there. Tattoo's not my style, but I can see why you have it. Congratulations on surviving. If you ever decide to do the full replace like Avalon here, I can duplicate the scars for you if you like. A little fiddly, but doable. And -" 

She glances at Avalon, and nods. 

" - you ought to know Avalon was originally in a male body. I'd estimate - two, three years, from looking at you? You pass really well, I -"

Have absolutely no sense of tact, and I'm still invading the personal space of a guest in MY LAB.

December sheepishly drops Z's arm. 

"- fuck, sorry."

...he laughs, a little self-consciously.

"Nah, it's okay. It's, uh..."

He rubs his wrist.

"It's not bad somebody notices this stuff. And...it's good to know I could keep 'em. Not that more wouldn't show up, but..."

"Not if I did my work right they wouldn't. Not because you'd stop cutting, mind you: I build my bodies to last." 

December's one of the founding members of the Reformed Order of Progenitors, and one of the best Mad Doctors I know. Don't get her started on the Singularity - Hoffnung, she'll yak at you forever about it - but otherwise, I trust her with my life.

"Aww, such a glowing review! I didn't know you cared!"

I'll be sure to leave a formal complaint after you accidentally kill me. 

"Anyway, Kai-zi. What are you working on, anyway? I see you've got some nerves going - what are you after? Scanner? Regenerator? Orchid petal, cell phone..." 

She trails off, humming lowly to herself as her gaze flicks from component to component. 

He was about to ask about the cut thing, but that sidetracks him almost instantly.

"–oh, yeah, the petal's just – for the map, you know?"

He waves his hand vaguely.

"I wanted to wire something into me but I've just got the connection planned out, I don't know whether I'm gonna go for healing or for – have you ever wanted to see new colors? I kinda want to see new colors. Like, in a useful way, I guess but still– uh, sorry, for a new sense."

"Hell yes you're talking my language. Have you considered perfect proprioception? It's amazing how little of our own bodies we actually have any direct sensory feedback from."

"–oh, nice–wonder if I could stack that with something, improved sensation or–"

He peers in at the nerves eagerly.

"I wonder if I can make it upgradable, that'd solve a lot of problems...I could just put a port in on my neck or something..."

"Oh yes, that's very doable. I'd offer to help, but - this is what, your second Wonder? I'd rather not cramp your style." 

She gives Avalon a sideways glance.

... what December's trying to say is that usually people are still figuring out their Aesthetic this early -

"- and you're working from the example of Miss Fairy Princess over there. For all her packrattiness, you've still got kind of a limited selection of materials. I mean, where's all the steel?" 

And when was the last time you built something you didn't immediately stick into your body, Miss Extropian? Let him work: he can ask for what he wants, he's got a functioning brain.

"It's gonna be pretty small, I can melt down some old phone parts if I need to...probably. If there's a good place to melt things. Hey, do you have any fancy rings?"

Check the hose, I think there are a couple with inset stones or patterns. As for heat, the cauldron can get hot enough to melt steel: just twiddle the valve on the leg of the workbench. 

"–oh, thanks–"

He dashes to the hose to look through the rings crammed onto the end.

"–diamond! Got it!"

He starts pulling them off carefully to get at the one he was looking at.

"Okay I might need a laser for this part–"

December slaps a slim, silvery cylinder into his hand. One end is pointed: the other, blunt with a metal clip. Rubber pads just above the pointy end suggest a grip like a pencil: a single silver button sits where the thumb can hold it down. 

"Blue-cutter!" 

"Yes! Thank you! Got a microscope?"

He digs his pocketknife out of his back pocket and sits down at the workbench, pushing its current contents aside.

December's hands tap his temples - "Goggles!" - and green-shaded lenses assemble themselves across the bridge of his nose. Blocky letters slide into his vision, somehow picking out the places he doesn't need to see. 

[SCAN: ENGINEERING]
[MAGNIFICATION: 0x]
[TARGET: INCLUSIONS]

As his attention shifts, the goggles respond smoothly, zooming his vision in: the counter ticks up. five, ten, fifty, a hundred, five hundred. Green highlights pick out the slight flaws and inclusions in the stone, the details of how it attaches to the ring. The image stays solid, even as he breathes and shifts, never jerking or losing the focus of his attention. 

He laughs in delight.

"Good–something to help pull this out–"

He puts down his knife and the cutter for a moment to crack his knuckles.

“Pliers!”

Thwap. 

Excellent.

The diamond comes out of the ring, the goggles zoom in, and he fires up the bluecutter–

"–wait, I've only got one of these, I've gotta get it right the first time–"

He puts down his other tools and grabs the coloring book and a stray pencil, turning it to the back cover and starting to sketch furiously.

(Avalon winces where Z can’t see her.)

(December catches Avalon’s wince out of the corner of her eye, and - ) 

The lines Z’s drawing highlight in green: when he raises his pencil from the page again, a glowing green tracery follows it up into the air. 

The HUD updates. 

[OVERLAY: ENGINEERING] 
[MAGNIFICATION: 5x] 
[MODE: HOLODESIGN]

–oh! Better!

He starts to sketch in midair, closing the coloring book and pushing it carefully aside.

He might be here a while.

(Avalon carefully retrieves her coloring book before it can be further sketched on.)

(December shares a half-smile with her.)

(She lays her head on December's shoulder, and watches.)

He sketches and refines for some time. He tries to really understand what he's doing, every so often, but he finds that trying just makes his head spin, so he lets himself calculate and plan and mark up his model and doesn't try to apply the science education he doesn't have.

Then he picks up the blue-cutter again and sets to work laser-engraving the inside of the diamond. It took a while, to get his design to incorporate the inclusions, but he thinks it's really going to be worth it...

(He has no idea how long he's been here.)

Avalon and December come and go: after an attempt at leaving coffee in his workspace fails, December attaches a bracelet of a strange, greenish metal around his upper arm. It stings for a moment - then the fog of fatigue at the edges of his brain clears. 

[WONDER STATUS]
[WAKER: ACTIVE]
[CHARGE: 12 HOURS]

December sips her coffee.

–ahaha yes. The sting energizes him before the thing even kicks in, and after it does he feels completely refreshed.

He finishes the minute engravings in...a couple of hours. A few hours. Something in that time frame. As soon as he does he heads to the cauldron, turns it up and starts gutting the phone. The plastic casing goes in, as does some quicksilver, and – yes! – a chunk of one of the bouncy balls. Now he just needs something for a mold...

[OVERLAY: ENGINEERING]                                                        [WONDER STATUS]
[MAGNIFICATION: 1x]                                                                     [WAKER: ACTIVE]
[MODE: CONSTRUCTION]                                                        [CHARGE: 8 HOURS]
[SCAN: COMPONENTS]                                                          [SUSTAINER: ACTIVE]
[SEARCH: RE-APPROXIMATION]                                           [CHARGE: 22 HOURS]

The mugful of marbles highlights in his vision, along with the dresser drawer, the aquarium, the cauldron, and three dozen of the hodgebodge boxes. 

As his attention flicks to the already-occupied aquarium, three-quarters of the green glows abruptly wink out. 

[FLAWS DETECTED]
[RE-APPROXIMATED]
[CONTAINER]
[VOLUME < 20 LITRES]
[NON-RIGID]
[NOT IN USE]

He grabs the mug.

Is there any clay around here? Something he can mold and mark up?

The goggles highlight... something. It's behind another stack of cardboard boxes. 

(It proves to be a lacquered wooden case full of little plastic cans of silly putty.)

...he can work with this. 

A little silly putty, a little crushed chalk from the next drawer down, a little applied heat...he's got something he can make a mold out of.

He gets the two halves done quickly, with a little help from the smaller tools on his knife and a piece of wire he had handy. When he pours the melted plastic mixture in it hardens quickly.

He cleans out the cauldron. The ring goes in next, as well as some wire and some of the phone guts. While it's melting, is there a toy laser pointer down here?

His goggles pick out a drawerful in three different colors.

–even better!

He grabs one in each color and heads back to the desk, guts them as the metal melts in the cauldron. He reuses his molding material, scrawls in the right lines, pours it in – there's the wires he needs. And if he takes this chip from the phone, the battery from this pointer, sets in the diamond and...

Everything becomes a blur for the next few hours. He has flashes of memory – slicing nerve fibers, arranging lasers, splicing in the headphone jack from the flip phone – but it's all wordless ideas and impulses and that same crackle of electricity and scent of ozone from the club.

By the end of it, the bracelet has come off, somehow, the workbench is a mess of wires and nerve fiber leavings and – blood? for some reason? – and he's asleep face down in scraps of putty, clutching a small black plastic capsule with an input jack at one end and nerve fibers braided into a cord at the other.

After fifteen minutes’ unconsciousness, the lab safeties decide that he should instead be asleep face down in a lovely pillow fort. 

About an hour later, December drops in to retrieve her bracelet and goggles.

They're laid neatly on the workbench somewhere relatively unstained.

Z twitches and mumbles in his sleep.

December pauses, and quickly checks his vitals through her green-tinted lenses.

He's lost a little blood, and he's very short on sleep, but he's...fine, mostly. This is just how he is.

Yeah, about how she expected.

She leaves a cup of coffee on the desk, and heads off. It’d be weird of her to watch him sleep.

(Would it weirder or less weird if she told him she was just musing on how much fucking time people lose from sleeping? Eh, better not to risk it.)

Some time later, voices drift in from an adjoining room. 

“- and so you just invited him into your secure lab? You don’t know this guy from Adam! Security measures only work if you use them, Avalon. You’ve got to stop taking in strays like this.”

His eyes flutter open.

But he doesn't get up, yet, he just listens, checking over his implant to make sure the nerves are still alive enough to be revived or at least replaced – shit, he shouldn't have fallen asleep, he should have gotten this put in right away...

“- yes, yes, I get it, But you’ve got the portable lab, it’s not like he needed the whole contents of your personal setup -”

“Hey, she made a new friend! You should be happy for her, not - bemoaning that she let someone see her lab. She was right there, and it’s her lab, not yours. This is a good thing!”

“Oh yeah, a good thing. Come on, the boy’s barely twenty at best, he has no fucking clue, and he Broke Through because of Jinx -“

“- and what’s so bad about Jinx, anyway?” 

“Not only that, she’s smarter than she looks. She’s survived as a rogue Unmada for what, a decade now? That takes skills. I wouldn’t put it past her that this is some kind of intricate plot.” 

“- you really think Jinx is capable of that? Are we talking about the same girl, here?”

“That’s how you know she’s good at it.”

“You really think a just-catalyzed Genius in the heart of Avalon’s lair stands a candle to her? Get a grip, Mallory, this isn’t the damn war anymore -“

“We never did get them all, not for sure.”

“- and need I remind you who’s the Neid here? This is exactly the kind of fear and hopelessness that’s been keeping us from moving forward. We could use a Staunen.” 

“We are not replacing her. Not now, not ever.”

“...not what I meant. I, just - between the three of you, I - can’t we do more?”

“We’re already doing more than we should be. A stray Genius here, a Bardo there - where does it end?”

He can't decide whether to be flattered or upset. Of course he has no fucking clue! He was looking for a weird LARP less than 24 hours ago! And does he honestly seem like a Nazi mania monster?

He tries to slip out of the fort without being loud enough to hear. He's had practice, if not with this specifically.

“We’ve had this argument a dozen times now, Mallory. You use your part of the fund for what you want, and we’ll use ours. It’s done, it’s settled, move on already. I don’t try to get you to buy into the Singularity any more, now, do I?”

“That’s not being a functioning Collaborative. That’s hardly even being a Collaborative at all, damn it!  Fine, yes, I might be jumping at shadows. Have you even considered that he might be a sleeper agent? He doesn’t need to be complicit to be dangerous to us, we have enough enemies with strong enough Geniuses -”

“My goggles didn’t detect anything.”

“And you became a Doctor Of Apokalypsi... when?”

“Do you want me to just go around deep-scanning people on a whim, is that what you want me to do?”

“You tell me, you’re the Doctor Of Epikrato! I thought you understood the degree of bullshit an Inspired neurosurgeon can do! How many of your theses were on reversing the effects of hostile personality editing, again?”

“One. You evidently didn’t actually read my conclusions, though. Personality editing is like Resurrection or Time Travel, the Mania fights it, that’s why it requires so much fucking work and why it’s so easy to reverse -”

“... so why haven’t you checked already, then?”

“Because he’s entitled to privacy in his own damn brain!”

“Fine. In that case, call up Lyn and get her to ask her damn Oracle. That’s what she’s got the damn thing for, right?”

“She’s still off in some third-world country hunting Larva dealers, I haven’t heard from her in weeks.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you knew something about Apokalypsi. The girl behind you did her first three theses on Skafoi. Are you really telling me that between the two of you you have no fucking clue where Lyn’s gone?”

He pulls himself to his feet, walks over and opens the door.

"Or you can just look in my fucking head and we can get this part over with."

He taps the side of his skull.

"Hi, sorry, don't think we've met."

She doesn't offer a hand. 

"Dr. Mallory Karnstein. I'm the Collaborative's security specialist."

(Avalon is curled up on a couch, looking at her tablet. She doesn't look up.)

"Self-appointed security specialist, and Neid. That's the Catalyst of jealousy, bitterness, envy, predisposes to paranoia -" 

"- it's not paranoia if they're -"

" - really out to get you, yes, thank you. You're being incredibly rude both to your guest and your host." 

"Alright, fine. Let Avalon decide, then - it's her lab. Her lab, her rules, didn't we agree?"

Avalon doesn't shift.

"... Mallory..." 

"No. Honestly."

He pulls up a chair and sits in it.

"Got nothing to hide."

...Karstein. You're an asshole and I don't know why you're still one of us, but I guess we've got to keep you on a leash somehow. 

And I have to admit, you have a damn point. Kai-Zi came here from an encounter with a nest of vampires - he could still have some lingering influence.

However. Nobody is going to fucking scan his brain. That's an ethical fucking line and we're not crossing it, no matter how much anybody insists. December, call Lyn. Karstein? Get the fuck out of my Bardo. I know you're the one who stuck in all those lovely gun turrets, but if you push me on this I will insist. You do not want me to insist. Leave. 

She sighs. 

"I come to warn you and you repay me with insults. Fine, I'm going. See if I bother next time."

She nods slightly to Z, and stalks out of the room. 

He waits until she's gone.

"...what's her problem, exactly?"

"Neid. Sees threats where there aren't any, plus the catalyst just makes you a generally unpleasant person. They're the Geniuses who broke through out of spite, so..."

She sighs. 

"I think she's having a bad rationality day - maybe it was that you surprised her? I dunno. Usually she's not so... awful." 

Avalon's head flops back against the sofa's armrest.

She's a Doctor of Kastastrofi, which is why we don't usually just tell her to shove it. I might be able to be anywhere and December might be able to be anyone, but Mallory's the one with the doom cannon. 

Sorry.

"It's cool. I get being paranoid after you lived through Secret Hitler War. And I am just some rando from a goth club."

He leans back in his chair.

"...is there really a doom cannon?"

I wouldn’t put it past her. 

"What does a doom cannon even...do? I don't think doom is a projectile."

"Colloquial term for anything with enough power to kill a moon."

"...there's a colloquial term for that?"

"You may have noticed that Geniuses aren't exactly the most stable people. Saves having to say things like 'Dr. TurboGrafx's Ultimate Positron Beam' and 'High-Aperture Electron Orbital Randomizer' and 'Antimatter-Fission Payload Artillery' and 'Point Nine Nine Nine Nine Nine Cee Brick Thrower' and 'Terawatt Orbital Laser Platform' and so on and so forth. You have a Doom Cannon. Dr. TurboGrafx, he has a Doom Cannon too. Mallory? She's got a Doom Cannon. Everybody gets a Doom Cannon." 

Informal Rule Of The Peerage #26: Thou Shalt Not Build Doom Cannons. Only idiots and crazies actually need enough firepower to destroy celestial objects.

"Hey, I'm a pretty healthy level of crazy and I've never wanted to blow up the moon."

"Yeah, this is one of the dividing lines between healthy and unhealthy levels of crazy."

All our jokes are thinly-veiled cries for help!

Ah, yes. Meta-humor.

"I'm pretty sure not every genius is somebody I'd want to be friends with on the internet but my sample so far is kinda pointing that way."

“Well, you had the good luck to get me.”

Avalon grins.

Now who’s playing into the stereotype?

December bows with an outrageous flourish.

“Sorry, milady, I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

He laughs–

–and is interrupted by his stomach complaining a little more loudly than he would have liked.

"So, I don't want to ask you to feed me after you already let me use your awesome secret lab..."

“- oh, yeah, the bracelet keeps you going but the damn thing doesn’t keep you from getting hungry, I’ve been trying to hammer out that issue for months now but it somehow it still keeps cropping up -”

Avalon raises an eyebrow.

More evidence for Flaw Theory, maybe?

“Maybe. In the meantime, let’s feed our poor newbie!” 

She takes a step, then pauses. 

“- actually, wait. You haven’t eaten or drunk anything for eight hours now, right?” 

"...yeah, why–"

"–oh, right."

He holds up his implant.

"I think she might need a little refresh on the nerve fiber, first, but after that – do I have to go under for it? probably, right? –"

“I can work on you so long as you don’t thrash and you’re still lucid enough to give instructions. For most of my Genius patients that means they give me install instructions beforehand and I sedate them, but if you’d rather stay conscious I can do that. We’d need somewhere to tie you down, though - for delicate nerve work I’m not going to trust your steely willpower, sorry.”

"I don't think my willpower is all that great, I just, uh–"

"...aaaactually maybe you should sedate me. Fun as the alternative would be. You didn't really sign up for the other stuff."

- I'm just going to leave the room now shall I?

"Probably a smart move." 

December looks at Z with renewed interest. 

"So, yeah. I have a piece of important information for you."

"...yeah?"

He leans in a little.

"Collar's not for show, and while I may be a sub, I'm also a sadist."

"–ooh. So you'd be into keeping the anesthetic off sometime?"

He touches the side of his neck.

"Whose collar?"

"- you haven't guessed? You're the Staunen, tell me when you figure it out." 

She runs a hand through her hair, and smiles. 

"But getting back to the point - I wouldn't mind keeping the anesthetic off, no." 

He glances at the door that Avalon just left through and grins.

"Sounds like it'd be fun, sometime. Maybe not for this, though. I don't think I've got the kinda self-control it takes to be still enough for brain surgery."

"Surprisingly, the brain's actually often operated on without general anesthetic. The brain itself doesn't contain any pain nerves - why would it have to? It's got layers and layers of skull and flesh atop it. And then the brain itself is delicate enough that if you have to operate on it, the first sign of something going wrong is likely to be impaired cognitive function - which is best tested by being able to talk to the person whose brain you're fucking with." 

She halfsmiles. "Of course, in the land of the sane that still means you get local for all the layers of bone and flesh between the brain and the outside world."

"This sounds amazing but can I still tap out if it turns out I can't deal? Like, I've broken my arm before and that was fine, but obviously I haven't ever..."

He waves his free hand around his head.

"Mm. Might not be the best to start with, then - anesthesia is a delicate business, and not something to do in a rush in the middle of a procedure..."

She taps her chin. "... though I do know of cases where surgeons have had their patients only awake for the delicate middle bit. I suppose I could adapt that, though... Mmh. I'm not sure I'd really appreciate having to cut through your skull while you're still conscious. That strikes me as possibly outside my own tolerances, and I need to be conservative there. It's fine for you, you can just get knocked out, but if I have to tap out I'm stuck having to reverse everything I've done so far. That or let you die, which is generally frowned upon in doctory circles." 

She sighs. " - It'll probably come down to the install details. Where do you need it implanted, and where should the access jack go?"

"Yeah. I've got time to work up to...skull-cutting. That's pretty intense. And if it's not fun for you that just sucks."

He considers implantation for a minute, then taps a spot just under and behind his ear.

"Jack goes here...the thing itself can basically wire into the brain stem."

"Splice looks simple enough..." 

She looks from the device to Kai-Zi and back. 

"... Honestly, do you want a whole operation, or would you like me to cheat so you can get to food faster?" 

"...what does 'cheating' look like, here?"

"Purpose-built surgical teleporter. Still risky and disorienting, but faster. Takes some skill to use, but..." 

She gestures to herself. "Medical Genius."

“—that’s amazing.”

"- Don't go trying to build one of these yourself, now. You've got to be at least two-thirds as awesome as me before this kind of thing'll work for you instead of giving you new and exciting ways to fuck yourself up." 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not. Got enough of those already, and they leave marks. This is like...”

 “...kinda like it didn’t even happen—”

That’s a weird thing to be concerned about! Why doesn’t he think about something else!

“What does it feel like?”

"I honestly have no idea. I've never installed a mod quite like this before."

"I'm kinda weighing up not having to do surgery and having the scar. But I'm pretty sure a sane person would go with the first one."

December grins.

“Good thing you’re not in the land of the sane any longer, hey? I can give you a mark to remember it by if you like.”

"–that option! I pick that!"

“Something specific, or should I surprise you?”

"I like surprises. Long as it's aesthetic."

“Did you really think I’d give you an unaesthetic scar? Come on now, be reasonable.”

"I love this place so much."

She pulls a vaguely-spiderlike device from her labcoat, test tubes along its back quadrant glowing a sickly, radioactive green. Slotting Kai-Zi’s implant into its jaws, she points it directly at his head.

“Good! Now, stand very, very still.” 

He becomes positively statue-esque.

The device goes ZORCH, and then there is something else inside his brain trying to - integrate with him -

The world spins: December grabs his shoulder, and holds his gaze. 

“Steady. Look at me. Please do your best not to vomit. Yes, becoming something greater does have some nasty side effects. It’ll pass. You’ll feel like you got hit by a fucking truck, but it’ll pass. Keep looking at me. Don’t worry about grabbing, I’ve had worse. Don’t bite your tongue.”

Oooo...kay. Everything is suddenly very–wobbly–and his muscles aren't working so well all of a sudden. He feels like every square inch of his skin is being bruised in reverse, which would probably be fun if he didn't have the world's worst case of vertigo.

He sways slightly in place and mumbles something indecipherable.

She flashes the green lights of her spider in his eyes. 

“Pupil dilation... good. Still breathing, that’s good too. Pulse...” Her fingers dig into his wrist. “...slightly tachy and fast, but that’s par for the course. Worst of it should be past by now. What’s your name, where are you, what did I just do to you, what color is the sky on alternate tuesdays?”

He tries to pull himself together enough to answer coherently.

"I'm Sss. nno. I'm Kai-zi. I'm in...a lab. You teleported my...thing. Into my head. And...'s this a trick question...?"

"B plus on your test questions: congratulations, you pass. The prize is not having brain damage. Not that that was likely, but I did cut it finer than I normally would. Wanna see your new scar?" 

"–um yes."

He sits up a little straighter and almost falls over backwards but he doesn't.

She pulls out her phone, snaps a quick picture, then holds it up for kai-zi to see. 

There's a pale starburst radiating from just above his left temple, twining across his scalp and through his hair like the tangled roots of a lightning-struck tree.

"I let the teleporter envelope clip you. Just a little, just a hair - if I'd been off much further, I'd have interpolated your implant with your skull - but it definitely gave the impression I wanted. How do you like it?" 

“...it’s perfect.”

It’s real — a mark from the event, not just a symbol added afterwards — and it’s messy and electric and gorgeous.

“Thank you.”

“It’s no problem. Now then, we should probably get some food into you, yeah?”

He nods.

"I could definitely eat."

"Let's not delay, then." 

She pushes open the door Avalon left through, and calls: 

"All done!" 

"- That was fast! Let me guess, telesurgeon?" 

"Got it in one!"

"Gee, how'd I guess? Come join me in the kitchen, hands are full -" 

"Coming!" 

She beckons to Z as she steps through the door. "This way, mind the Escher." She waves casually at a print hanging on the wall featuring many oddly-angled staircases. "I think it might be an original."

"Is somebody insinuating I do time travel over there?" 

"Nah, you wouldn't be stupid enough to go get a brand new Escher!" 

"- anyway, come on, kitchen's just around the corner."