Reba raises an eyebrow. "Psychic stuff."

Isabel rolls her eyes. "Psychics can read and influence thoughts. It's super illegal to actually do that without consent or extenuating circumstances, though, so the psychic experience is mostly just taking psi classes so you can use your power on volunteers and taking combat sim classes so you can use your power on your enemies. Reba doesn't do the sims, though, for some reason. I dunno why, she'd kick ass."

"I get my kicks elsewhere," Reba shrugs. 

Isabel laughs. "God you're creepy."

"Well, now I'm curious if you work on me. If I asked you what number I was thinking of, would you be able to look for that and nothing else, or would you have to go through my whole head for it?"

"7184," Reba says absently. "Number games are easy. If you wanted your childhood traumas erased or something, I'd be seeing a lot more. Or if you wanted to quit smoking. Not that you can smoke."

"Hey, I didn't say you could do it yet! At least I was already thinking of the number." Note to self: encrypt hard disk and all running processes.

"Also, if you see me smoking, grab a fire extinguisher."

Lucy giggles.

"Sorry," Reba says vaguely. "I must have misinterpreted. English is my second language."

"Oh, what's your first? I am sadly monolingual."

"Hebrew," Reba says. "I actually speak about fifteen languages, one of the perks of being a high-tier psychic is that I can incorporate others' skills and knowledge with a bit of effort. And consent, of course."

"That's pretty cool! I wonder if I could do something similar, get translation software and integrate it directly into my brain."

Reba considers this. "An interesting concept. I imagine it'd be useful, but not necessarily equivalent to actually speaking the language - you might end up sounding like a tourist with a translation dictionary if you aren't using some very good software. Although you're a gadgeteer, of course, so maybe you could design some yourself."

"Well, I can try it first with off-the-shelf software and see how I sound. I'm planning to stack a lot of cognitive speedups, so I might be able to patch awkward phrasing by thinking a lot before I speak."

"Ah, the Exemplar solution," Reba smirks. "Well, the one that isn't 'just keep punching until it works'."

"I have yet to have any problems that can be solved by punching," she says. "And I'm not likely to start, given my total lack of interest in the combat sims."

"I'm not even sure how they'd make the sims work for you," Reba confesses.

"There's a direct neural jack for particularly nonhuman body plans," Isabel chips in. "You don't get the full sensory suite, but it's still effective for finals and stuff."

"If it's a neural jack specifically I may still need to rig up an adapter--no neurons. I'll figure something out, though, or they will. I doubt I'm the first ever android to need to take combat finals."

"Think you might be, actually," Isabel says. "I'm not aware of anyone else who managed an upload as a teenager. But you're definitely not the least humanoid person to have to take them. They just call it a neural jack out of biological chauvinism, it interfaces directly with your consciousness. Impressive little piece of work."

"Ah, biological chauvinism. I've actually seen surprisingly little of that, at Whateley or elsewhere. Well, the robotic anatomy professor did mistake me for somebody else's assistive device, but he didn't mean any harm by it."

"Yeah, at a campus that can accommodate a sentient cloud of nerve gas, a robot isn't going to raise too many eyebrows," Isabel says.

"Yeah. It's nice. And equipment that interfaces directly with my consciousness sounds super cool, by the way." (Note to self: make the encryption toggleable on the fly in case I want to get intimate with a psychic something-or-other.)

"Yeah, the VR tech's really nice," Isabel says. "I'm not really that kind of Devisor, but I can appreciate quality when I see it."

"Does anybody do anything with it here besides simulated violence? Because I could really enjoy a good VR game if they have any available."

"Oh, there's tons of VR games," Lucy says. "Software devisors are a dime a dozen, and games are pretty marketable. Though they are mostly about simulated violence. Or sex. There's a couple of really nice-looking artsy platformers, though!"

"Artsy sounds fun, and I bet there are some nice puzzle games too."

Lucy shrugs. "I'm not that into gaming, honestly. And puzzle games are usually less fun than protein-folding."

"Yeah, the best thing would be a game that lets me get extra lab time as a freshman. One class period a day is just not enough to fab as fast as I can design."