"Has no one looked into what that implies, at least? I'm not saying it means they're - people or something, but it feels like it could be significant."

"I don't really know," Jackson says. "It's pretty recent. I don't think computers are people."

"Neither do I, it's just I wouldn't have expected magic that works on minds to work on them."

"I think there's a technical definition that isn't exactly minds," says Jackson.

"Do you know anything more than that? Does it work on animals? Plants? How complicated does a computer have to be before it counts?" When they get out of the middle of nowhere Daria is going to find a library and see how long she can stay before they kick her out.

"I don't think it has to be a very complicated computer. Psions can do stuff to animals but I dunno why you'd want to."

"Checking what kind of thoughts animals have, having them do things humans can't physically do, borrow instincts? I don't know how much of that a psion could do but off the top of my head all of that sounds useful."

"I guess. I don't think it's very popular. Maybe it takes longer than picking up precog. It probably pays less."

"How does picking things up work?"

"You think about how it could work, till it does, and then you think about it more to make it better. Since it's per person, how everything works."

"You just... think about it and it happens? Really?"

"...is that weird? What else would we do?"

"If I want to do something with necromancy, no amount of just thinking about it will make me better at actually doing it. I can decide that there's a better way to do something, but then I have to test it to see if works, and probably make some more changes and gradual improvments when I'm testing it. I don't just - spontaneously know how to do it because I was thinking about it!"

"I mean, we just do magic by thinking about it, so there's nothing else to... do," says Jackson.

"Yes, but..." She isn't sure exactly what she's objecting to, but she sure objects to it strongly.

"Can you tell when you can do something, or do you have to try to do it first?"

"You can usually tell but you're supposed to wait a while to make really sure if it'd be dangerous if you're bad at it."

"What does it feel like?"

"Uh, like... knowing how to do a thing?"

"I mean, do you gradually figure it out, is it like remembering something, it is like something suddenly making sense where it didn't before?"

"Some of both."

"That sounds like it'd be fascinating to experience. I wonder if there are any psions that can share sensations like that..."

"They can but it doesn't let you learn faster. Uh, learn magic faster, it's probably fine for... math and stuff."

"Ooh."

"It's not really common though."