The doctor makes it clear that he appreciates their vigilance, because there are definitely circumstances under which this could be very dangerous. However, this is as far as he can tell a perfectly normal fever, so he sends her home to get fluids and rest.

Rest sounds like a good plan. Margaret rides most of the way home with her eyes shut. On the way, her father realizes he's left his wallet at his work.

"I'm just going to swing by the garage real fast and look for it, okay? You can wait in the car."

"Mhmm. That's fine."

The fever's been receding unusually fast through the car ride, and by the time she's shut in the car, Margaret is completely lucid. She's covered in sweat, but that's to be expected.

Her reflection in the mirror might catch her eye, once she opens them, because her eyes are now electric blue. That's much less to be expected.

That's definitely weird, but at least it isn't actively awful like every other suprise her body's given her lately. This car is not really the best place to be covered in sweat; she thinks she'll get out and walk around a bit.

She's always loved her dad's auto shop; the smell of oil and metal, the cars in various stages of damage and repair, the neatly laid-out tools. But this time stepping in there is different. The cars are still there, but they're even more interesting. This one with its hood open, for example, clearly has a problem with its torque converter. Might as well save her dad some time and patch it up. That one over there has a pair of wires rubbing together that shouldn't be; yank and replace and that silly lying Check Engine light won't go on anymore.

This is fun. It would be even more fun if her hands weren't so weak. Those hydraulics in the good-for-nothing pile aren't good enough for a car anymore, it's true, but they'll make a workable arm brace, lend her some of the strength and steadiness that have been draining out of her all year. She just needs a couple of these cams to set up a negative feedback system so it will amplify but not over-amplify her motions . . . yes, that's much improved.

At this point she's interrupted by her father, who has found his wallet and is glad to see her looking so energetic until he sees her eyes.

"What. What even. Your eyes are blue, they were brown a minute ago, this isn't normal. We're going back to that doctor and if he says "rest and fluids" again we're going to the emergency room. I don't know if this is your condition or something else but I don't like it."

Her vague protests that she feels as good as ever, kind of excellent actually, get sensibly ignored, but he doesn't ask for the hydraulics back. She returns to the doctor with the exoskeleton piece still strapped to her arm.

The doctor is very, very surprised. He runs a blood test, and when it's done, he looks at the results and sighs.

"Well, I've got bad news and... other news. The bad news is that you're still suffering from your condition, and your life expectancy has not improved. The other news is, well... you appear to be a mutant. Based on the, um, symptoms, I'd say you're either a gadgeteer or devisor - one of the inventor-types. I don't really know what to say to this, and frankly bedside manner has never been my strong point, but... make the best of the time you have, I suppose."

John Perry sighs. "It could be worse. I guess this doesn't change anything, really. We can get you a pair of contacts, at least get your eyes looking alright."

"But dad, I can use this! I can make things that will help me function better."

"Do you need crutches? We can get you crutches."

The doctor can get them crutches.

Margaret will take the crutches. They're structural metal, and that's a nice thing to have. She'll take the brown contacts, if it will make her parents feel better. She'll also start making plans, because clearly nobody else is going to.

Over the next days and weeks and months, a series of schematics comes together in her desk, and a collection of parts starts to form under her bed. She raids the scrap pile outside her dad's garage and the loading dock behind the school for as much metal and as many components as she can get.

As her design comes together, it gets more ambitious. What started out as a way to make her stronger, let her energy stretch farther, becomes a hope of saving her life. It's a gamble out of science fiction, but she can see how it can be made to work. The scientific principles are sound, it's just a matter of implementation. And of keeping herself together long enough to pull it off.

Her school has a robotics club; she was in it, freshman year, the last time she had long-term ambitions and the ability to act on them. Now she has both of those again, and they still keep their parts in the same place. They won't miss a few circuit boards and motors out of last year's project. And the local electronics store, of course, doesn't care what she wants these screws and electrodes for. She's falling behind in her classes for the first time in her life, but while her parents bite their nails they don't suspect anything other than the obvious reason.

The last step, the point of no return, is when she cannibalizes her laptop. The processor isn't the fastest and the hard drive could stand to have a lot more space, but she's done the math and they'll handle what she needs them to. Namely, herself.

A fully-functioning robot stands next to Margaret's bed. The limbs are thin, not much stronger than her fading muscles, and the head is just a box with cameras and microphones and a little speaker. But it's stable and sturdy and it isn't dying.

She arranges the elecrodes on her head and flips the switch. Her biological body collapses, its brain scrambled, and her camera-eyes open. A metallic voice says, "Eureka."

Her parents don't handle it very well when she clanks downstairs to dinner. Probably worse because of the sudden surprise, really, but if she had told them they might have tried to get in the way. Eventually they're persuaded that yes, she really is still their daughter, and then the relief that she isn't sick anymore kicks in. Still, they insist that see a psychologist, because "she's clearly been through a lot". 

None of them raise the question of whether she's going back to school the next week. None of them are really sure where to begin answering it.

Dr. Bennett is rather startled by a robot entering her clinic, but she handles it admirably. Soon enough Margaret is seated on the long couch with the psychologist sitting in an armchair across from her.

"Now, this isn't the most traditional start to a therapy session, but I'll explain in a minute - I suspect you need this more than regular therapy. First, do you still have the knowledge that allowed you to construct your body? And I don't just mean your own specs - could you build a laser gun, or a supercomputer, or some other strange device?"

"I could definitely do this again, I actually have a lot of ideas on how to improve myself once I've saved up for parts. A laser gun shouldn't be too difficult if I had the right crystals or gases. A supercomputer would be harder, equipment-wise, it'd be easier to design the chips and get them etched at a professional facility. Ooh, now that you mention it, custom chips that suit my particular brain architecture could speed up my cognition by as much as 46 percent!"

"Well, you're definitely still a Gadgeteer," Dr. Bennett laughs. "And you certainly sound like you can pass a Turing test. So, here's the deal. I can give you all of the therapy you want, but you're still going to have a problem, and that problem is that you're a mutant in a robot body, trying to fit into a society made for baseline humans. Fortunately, I know a place that can help you with that problem. It's called Whateley Academy, and it's a school for mutants. They'll have the resources to teach you how to control and make better use of your powers, not to mention physical resources you can use to improve your body. I went there myself, as a young woman, and I firmly believe it'll be the best place for you."

"There's a school where I can learn to do more with this? That sounds so much better than going back to my high school and trying to explain what I did fifteen hundred times. Is it academically rigorous? If it's academically rigorous my folks'll send me there for sure." If some of that certainty is because she knows they aren't sure how to cope with having a robot in the house, well, she didn't actually want therapy today. And it is at least 90% about the academic rigor.

"It's very academically rigorous. Also, given your non-human body plan, you're most likely eligible for a substantial scholarship. I'll give you the application at the end of our session. But we do still have forty-five minutes, and you did in fact escape death by a very narrow margin recently, so I'd like to get into some of that with the time we have left..."

Dr. Bennett puts forth a concerted effort to therapize Margaret in the remaining forty-five minutes, taking into account the fact that her patient does not want to be here and will probably not be coming back. At the end of the session she gives her a packet of papers labeled WHATELEY APPLICATION.

Margaret is sufficiently grateful for the unexpectedly useful advice that she'll tell the therapist about the relief of having a future again and how nice it feels to have a body that isn't betraying her unexpectedly. Then she'll start reading the WHATELEY APPLICATION like it contains the key to immortality. Which, in a way, it might.

The WHATELEY APPLICATION has a number of perfectly normal questions - it asks her gender (with a wide variety of options, including a checkbox for "my sex has been altered by my power"), date of birth, current mailing address, et cetera. It also asks less normal questions, among which are "nature of powers", "date of manifestation", and a fill-in which requests that she describe any changes her power has made to her body.

She ticks the checkbox for "altered by my power" but puts her gender as female; she's still a girl if it even makes sense to ask the question. "Nature of powers" gets "enhanced engineering knowledge and skills; ability to design and build things that work the first time from first principles". The body changes section gets "I have replaced my original body entirely with an android of my own design", plus a description of her general shape and dimensions and "blueprints available on request".

When she calls her mother back in, she indeed proves easily seduced by the description of Whateley's math and engineering curriculum.

Once the application is posted, she receives a response within a few business days. The response requests that she report to a police station in a town a few miles away for "evaluation".

Being asked to report to a police station for evaluation is kind of unnerving! On the other hand, mutant school! She shows up at the appointed time, trying to look like an unthreatening pile of mismatched metal tubing with black lenses for eyes.

She meets with one Officer Delacroix, who informs her that he works with the Academy to verify that applicants do in fact have powers. "You're obviously not a baseline," he admits, "but we still wanna test your Gadgeteer ability." He places various broken machines in front of her, of varying levels of complexity, all the way from a broken pocketwatch to what looks like an oversized "fairy princess" wand, which pops open to reveal a forest of wires and circuits.

The broken pocketwatch just needs this spring unbent and a bit of oil. The microwave has a capacitor that let the magic smoke out; she can rewire it to need one fewer capacitor and use the one thus freed up to replace the dead one (and while she's in there, she'll make the popcorn setting actually work instead of burning half the popcorn and leaving the rest as kernels). The roomba has its accelerometer miscalibrated; she'll recalibrate it. Various other gizmos are diagnosed and repaired.

The fairy princess wand is an extremely complicated piece of work; just understanding what it's supposed to do is a challenge. But eventually she figures out not only what it's supposed to do but why it isn't doing it, and she tinkers, and she fiddles, and not long after the officer starts tapping his foot she makes a pleased noise and waves it and a shower of sparkly lights comes out.

The officer whistles. "You're the real deal, alright. Now I gotta send that wand back to get it broken properly again, they got a special way they like to do it."

He takes a look through her application. "Says here your physical sex was affected by your mutation - now, do you mean that in the 'used to be a boy' sense or the 'robots don't have a physical sex' sense? No judgment either way, just wanna clarify."

Margaret would smile at the compliment, if she had a face capable of smiling at the moment. Instead she just thanks him.

"I started out as a girl, and I guess I'm either still a girl or else nothing in particular. I don't feel less girly than I did last week? I'd still rather be a "she" than a "he"? So I'd say I'm a girl without a physical sex."

"Alright, good to know." He marks something down. "'Cause they're really lookin' for the first answer with that question, it just confuses some folks. There's some kids that get completely switched just as part of mutation, and there's some where just tryin' to figure it out would give you a headache. Compared to that, robot body with a girl inside is easy."

He asks a few more questions, then tells her she can go home and Whateley will contact her soon.

Her parents have already handled her transferring out of the public high school, albeit probably in a way that left them thinking she's getting sicker, so she has a while at home to think about her new body and what she wants to do with it.

It's a better body than her old one, that much is obvious. She still needs to sleep, but she doesn't feel exhausted anymore as long as she plugs into a wall occasionally to recharge. But more than that, she's made of stuff she can understand, gears and motors and batteries with none of the noisy complexity and grossness of biology. It already fits her like a favorite shirt, better than the last one did even before the illness. With enough time and materials, she could build a form that anyone would envy.

And she does have time. It's not just that the ticking clock of her disease has been removed; she can keep existing as long as she can keep maintaining her hardware and software. She could live longer than a normal person, maybe a lot longer. That much future dropped on her all at once is a bit overwhelming--so many things she might have time to do someday!--but it's a good overwhelming.

With thoughts like these, and other thoughts involving a lot more schematics and part numbers, she passes the time waiting for Whately to call.

Whateley contacts her and lets her know that she's been accepted for the spring semester, which starts in a few weeks. She's also eligible for a substantial scholarship on the basis of her "GSD," which is apparently how they've chosen to refer to her android body. Also, in a weird coincidence, it turns out the Academy is about twenty minutes away from her.

Time passes quickly when there's something to look forward to. It's not long before she's on the train to the town of Dunwich, and then the shuttle bus to the Academy.

Margaret gets off the train with a bag full of clothes and toiletries (soldering iron, wd-40, screwdriver . . .) and a couple of classic novels and follows the current of other students onto the campus. Does she know her dorm assignment yet?

She's in Whitman, but before she can get to the dorm, she and a handful of other students are picked out of the crowd and herded into a group.

"You are all new to Whateley Academy," says a cheerful elderly woman in a long black dress. "Welcome! I am Gertrud Wolfgang, one of the instructors here. Before we start our tour, let's go around and introduce ourselves: name, power, and what you hope to accomplish with your powers and your education at Whateley."

The first to speak up is a British-sounding girl with a long bronze sword sheathed at her waist. "I'm Riya Chaudhri, and I've chosen the codename Claymore," she says proudly. "I'm the bearer of the Blade of Hrothgar, and I can project lightning and manifest a suit of plate armor that protects and strengthens me. I'm going to use my powers to get rich."

Going counterclockwise, a boy wearing camo speaks next. "I'm Tohji Maruko. Don't have a codename yet. I can manifest guns, and slow down my perception of time to aim. I'm gonna be a superhero."

"Sean Liam Carter," says a boy hugging himself to stay warm despite his thick sweater. "Or Liam Sean Carter, I haven't decided. I... used to be twins. I don't really know who I am anymore. I can project a phantom body and use it to manipulate objects, and I can see out of its - well, not eyes, but I can see from it. I want to learn more about what happened to me."

Then, a girl in a surgical mask with withered, papery skin speaks. "I'm Lucy Xiao," she rasps. "I'm a bio-devisor, according to the powers testing I underwent back in California. I hope to restore my body to how it was before my GSD took hold."

The buck passes to Margaret.

Margaret has made a few more improvements to herself since the police station--her voice is less tinny, her knees are sturdier--but she still looks a bit like a walking junkyard.

"I'm Margaret Perry, I'm a gadgeteer, still need a codename. I built this body because my old one was kind of garbage. I want to become an engineer and invent more things! Starting with a nicer chassis."

“Well, I wish you all the best of luck,” Professor Wolfgang says. “Now, let’s begin our tour. First, we’ll head to Schuster Hall to examine the Homer Gallery...”

The kids follow her as she talks about the history of the Academy, how it was founded in the 1960s by a group of superheroes and supervillains hoping to create a safe place for young mutants to grow and explore their powers.

Margaret is kind of surprised that people describing themselves as superheroes and supervillains can cooperate on anything, but she can see how this would be the thing they would try. 

She's mostly listening to the tour, but she does look some more at the other kids. Riya sounds like the only one who got as good of a deal on the manifestation front as Margaret, though Tohji  also seems pretty happy with his thing. She doesn't think she can imagine what Carter is going through, but she can certainly feel sympathetic.

When they reach Schuster Hall, there's a bust of Homer in a recessed nook, which Professor Wolfgang pulls like a lever to reveal a keyhole. She inserts and turns a key, and the wall swings open.

Within the gallery, there are various significant items. There's a wax figure of Champion, wearing his original costume - "And it is the original, Champion II was part of the founding association!" - a metric ton of gold ingots donated by Gabriella Guzman, an alumna who became outrageously rich, and a massive portrait of Lord Paramount, mutant overlord of Wallachia.

"We're required to show this portrait to all incoming freshmen. Now, as I mentioned, Whateley is neutral in the constant battle between superheroes and supervillains. We are not a 'superhero school', and Lord Paramount donated this portrait in part to remind you all of that. It is also partly due to his massive ego. Don't tell him I said that." Professor Wolfgang winks.

Oh wow, secret door in a wall that you open by pulling a thing, that's neat.

Margaret treats this gallery like every other museum exhibit she's been to: reading all the explanatory plaques as fast as possible with one eye on the teacher to make sure she doesn't get left behind.

Champion, as she probably already knows, was the first true "superhero" back in the 30s, but what she may not know is that he was in fact an Avatar who combined various spirits he encountered into a powerful energy called the "Champion Force". The Champion Force was sundered in the 2008 Detroit Event, and many of its fragments found their way into various other Forces; the Magus Force, the Blizzard Force, and the Umbral Force, to name just a few.

Gabriella Guzman, donor of the metric ton of 16kt gold, was born to a family of poor Mexican farmers, but attended Whateley on scholarship when her precognitive powers manifested. She flourished at the Academy, joining the Alphas in her senior year, and after graduating, proceeded to beat the stock market with a stick until money came out, leaving her richer than God. 

Lord Paramount's portrait has only a placard detailing the title of the portrait (Paramount in Glory) and the name of the painter.

She's halfway through the description of Professor Ripper's infamous Quasar Gun (thus named for confusing and intricate reasons) when Professor Wolfgang starts back up the stairs, leading the other students behind her.

Using your powers to get richer than God sounds pretty neat. Margaret pulls herself away from the Quasar Gun description and follows the tour along.

"So you're saying that supervillainy is condoned by Whateley Academy?" Riya asks, her eyes lit up.

"We do not take a stance on your activities once you graduate," Professor Wolfgang says neutrally. "However, if you are caught doing anything which would constitute 'supervillainy' while a student, you will face consequences up to and including expulsion."

"Aw," Riya pouts.

"What about superheroics?" Tohji asks.

"Also mostly forbidden," Professor Wolfgang clarifies. "You'll receive a handbook containing Whateley Academy's rules and regulations, but for obvious reasons combat between students is forbidden, with... certain specific exceptions. And fighting is most of what being a superhero is, so." She shrugs.

Margaret thinks "no violence" is a pretty sensible policy! Hopefully the exceptions, whatever they are, can be avoided and she can  build stuff in peace.

"What kind of exceptions are there?" Sean Liam asks suspiciously (and conveniently).

Professor Wolfgang winces. "Well, self-defense... there are some dispensations for the defense of others, as well... martial arts practice, including officially sanctioned duels... and, of course, Combat Finals."

"Duels?" Sean Liam squeaks.

"Combat Finals?!" Lucy says, her jaw dropping almost enough to dislodge her surgical mask. She quickly adjusts the mask.

"You don't have to accept a duel if you don't want to," Professor Wolfgang reassures Sean Liam. "But yes, Combat Finals and martial arts classes are mandatory. Usually you would learn about this a bit later, but the fact of the matter is, mutants are not widely accepted in baseline human society, and even if you have no intention of being a hero or a villain, you will most likely eventually be forced into situations where you must preserve your own life. That is simply the state of the world as it is. And it would be a shame, not to mention a waste of valuable resources, if we released our alumni into the world completely unequipped to protect themselves and they were inevitably torn to pieces by angry mobs."

That's not great, especially if her grades depend on it, but it's better than there being circumstances in which it's acceptable to jump someone in the hallways. And at least she has a chance at not being totally hopeless at all things physical, now. She moves "better motors" and "titanium everything" up her mental queue of upgrade projects.

The tour continues. Professor Wolfgang shows them the locations of the dorms and class buildings, as well as the medical center and the underground tunnel system. Finally, the tour concludes with a trip to the Crystal Hall, the school's fabulously overdone cafeteria. Professor Wolfgang explains the many and varied options to the four members of the group who eat food. Then, as they scatter, she turns to Margaret with an apologetic smile. "I'm afraid this part of the tour is probably wasted on you. You've been awfully quiet, dear; do you have any questions?"

Margaret hasn't given up on being able to taste food ever again, but her list of long-term project ideas puts it somewhere between "360° vision" and "pogo-stick feet???".

"That's alright. I do have a question, though. What's the best way to get access to engineering facilities and materials outside of class assignments? Are there clubs with lab space I can join, on-campus jobs I can use to get spending money . . . ?"

"Oh, of course! The Workshop for Devisors and Gadgeteers has materials and facilities available for both school and personal projects as long as they don't break the law and as long as those privileges aren't abused. That means that for materials like steel or titanium, you can get a pretty much unlimited supply just for being a student. Now, if you want osmium, or gold, or adamantium, you'll have to submit an itemized request and pay for it. Not the full price of the material, but even at a significant discount the costs stack up, so as you mentioned you may want a job on campus. There are plenty of on-campus jobs; the highest-paying jobs tend to be unpleasant in some way, whereas comfortable positions like librarian's assistant tend to pay a lower wage. You can find a list of open positions on our website when you receive your Whateley laptop."

Free titanium?! Best. School. Ever. She'll still want a job since she's going to be fabbing her own chips, but visions of arms and legs dance in her head.

"Oh, that's excellent! Speaking of which, when and where do I get my laptop?"

"Right after lunch, we'll go back to Schuster and get the laptops and your ID cards printed."

The other students approach, carrying trays of food. Riya and Tohji are arguing with each other about whether Deathlist is "cool". Lucy and Sean Liam are staying out of it.

Margaret finds a convenient outlet under whichever table they're converging on, grabs her cable out of her cargo shorts, and plugs her ankle into it. Might as well refuel when everyone else is doing it.

It turns out Lucy keeps her surgical mask on while eating, lifting it up slightly to raise the food to her mouth. Despite this, it remains spotless.

"What's up with the mask?" Riya asks.

"My GSD has disproportionally affected my mouth," Lucy says between bites of pasta. "I can assure you that you would rather not see it, especially during a meal."

"You're probably right," Riya says. "I meant the 'no mess' part, though."

"Oh. Superhydrophobic coating."

"Nifty."

They continue eating.

Margaret turns toward Lucy and tries not to either stare or avert her eyes. "So what's being a devisor like? I've heard it's like being a gadgeteer except also completely the opposite?"

"It's interesting," Lucy says. "I have enough medical knowledge to know that the things I do should be impossible, yet they happen. I mean, I gave a rabbit functional wings for God's sake. Through a retrovirus."

"Wow! I don't have any extra bio knowledge at all but I know that's pretty far out. Also that sounds adorable, do you have pictures?"

The corners of Lucy's eyes indicate a grin. "Yes, just let me-"

She takes out her phone and pulls up a photo of a rabbit with snowy white bat-wings folded on its back, then a video of the same rabbit hopping into the air and catching itself with its wings. "They're only really good for gliding - not enough muscle mass to flap properly, and the poor thing already has to eat twice as much as it should. But it's a strong proof of concept."

"Awwww! That totally is adorable. Did you bring it to campus or is it still with your folks?"

"I left it with my parents. We're not allowed to have pets on campus unless they're 'bound or unbound familiars', whatever that means. And I try not to get too attached to lab rabbits, even the initially successful ones."

"Probably something yet another kind of mutant does, there are so many kinds! I'm sorry you have to not get attached."

She waves a hand. "No worse than a farmer and her chickens. Though I have heard that chickens are singularly unpleasant creatures."

"I wouldn't know, I've never met any. My mom's a vet but she just does cats and dogs and the occasional hamster."

Lucy nods. "Neither have I; they're not very useful to my work. I am curious about something - you put yourself in a robot body, but why? It seems very dangerous, and as you are now I don't see any major advantage over the human form."

"My previous body was . . . not great. I probably would have done this eventually, once I'd taken the time to build a really nice superhuman body, but . . . I couldn't afford to wait."

After months of hiding her illness and then her recovery from classmates, admitting it to someone who isn't a parent or a doctor feels like putting down a burden.

Lucy nods. "I'm glad you had the option, then."

"Yeah, my mutation picked a really good time to kick in." 

And that's about as much of that topic as she can manage right now. 

"Speaking of improvements on the human form, Tohji, you said you can speed up your mind? What does that feel like, moving your body when your mind is sped up? I've thought about trying to do something similar."

Tohji looks up from his sandwich. "It's kind of weird? But, like, weird in the way you'd expect, it feels like my body's lagging behind me. I've learned to adjust to it for aiming - you don't need to move quickly to be a sniper, just steadily."

"That makes sense. Also, when you say you manifest guns, do you have to know how they work, or is it any gun you've seen, or any gun you can name, or the same specific gun every time, or what?"

"I have to know how it works, yeah - I've tried making those Devisor guns you see on TV, but I get nothing. But, uh, I know a lot about guns. I can make a lot of different guns."

"I wonder if I designed a gun, one you'd never seen before but could presumably make in principle, how much would I have to tell you before you could make it? And would it matter if it was similar to guns you knew about versus if it worked on different principles?"

"That's right, you're a Gadgeteer, not a Devisor... I think it's the amount of knowledge I'd need to field-strip it and put it back together, that's the threshold I was at with the guns I already had before I manifested, but I don't know if the sci-fi-ness would interfere with that even if it was easy to physically put together. I guess I'll find out at some point!"

"Maybe we can make a class project out of it! Do you have any idea what classes you'll be taking?" This last is addressed to the table at large.

There's a general shrug. "Presumably I'll be in the Workshop a lot," Lucy says, "but as far as specific classes, no idea."

Sean Liam nods. "I've heard you can learn magic here, which I'm definitely interested in."

"Anything related to combat, I'm in," Riya proclaims.

"Same here," Tohji says.

"I'm with Lucy on this one, anything with a lab component. Plus something in the humanities, I think, wouldn't want to neglect that completely."

"Indeed you wouldn't," Professor Wolfgang interjects. "There are general education requirements at Whateley, like any other school. They're a bit less all-consuming than your average high school, more like the requirements for a college degree, but you'll still spend a good amount of your time here fulfilling them. We can't have illiterate supers running around; that'd just be embarrassing."

People are done eating. They get up and deposit their trays in the indicated location, then go around towards Schuster Hall.

Margaret wraps up her cable instead of dropping her tray, but otherwise follows the herd.

She will receive her laptop, handbook, and ID card, then! The ID card mysteriously has a picture of her robotic face, despite the fact that no such picture was taken at any point.

They didn't even request the blueprints! "Say, how did you get this picture?" she asks whoever is handing out the cards.

The guy shrugs. "Magic. -that sounds like I'm joking, I'm not, it's literally a spell on the card printer. Taking headshots of a couple hundred kids is a logistical nightmare, so some wizard thought this up."

There are so! many! kinds! of thing in the world! "Wow! Neat!"

She will resist the temptation to hold up the line interrogating the guy about magic.

Professor Wolfgang concludes the tour with a few words about how, as the school's new students, they represent the future, and something something make us proud and don't blow up the campus. Then they're free to roam, most likely to their dorms so they can get their stuff put away.

Margaret will go to her dorm, to put her stuff away but mostly to sign up for classes. What are her options, and how many can she fit in her schedule?

Well, there's room in her schedule for up to eight weekday classes, there are a handful of classes that meet on Saturday mornings, and there's a note indicating that many of the core gen-eds can be taken as independent study with consent from administration.

Her options range from "Fundamentals of Nanotechnology" to "Intro to Fabrication Techniques" to "Applied Defensive Technologies". There's also classes that aren't specifically geared towards hypergenius inventors, such as World Lit and Paranormal Law.

She can't register yet, though. She needs to be tested first. The built-in email system tells her that her appointment is in Lab G tomorrow at 10:00 AM.

Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh. She will go to her appointment tomorrow but today she will read syllabi for quite a while.

Many of the really interesting Devisor/Gadgeteer classes have onerous prerequisites. If she wants to take "Theoretical Concepts of Supraluminal Drives," for instance, she'd better be ready for "Advanced Hyperdimensional Non-Euclidean Mathematics" and its own list of requirements. She can't really tell which of the classes she's already eligible for, either, because she's clearly going to test out of some of them.

Lucy comes into the room about an hour later, dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her. "Oh, are we rooming together?" she comments. "Neat."

"Oh, that is neat! I've sort of grabbed this side but I can move if you really want it, I fell into a course catalog black hole and haven't unpacked."

"No preference," Lucy says. She starts unpacking. "I suppose it makes sense to put us together, we did both arrive at the same time and we both have GSD. Of a sort. Is the course catalogue that interesting, should I check it out or stay away lest I be consumed?"

"I guess this is more like GSD than most things are, but I assure you it's an improvement on what I had beforehand. Whether the catalogue will eat you depends on whether you're vulnerable to descriptions of amazing engineering things you don't know how to do yet but could someday!"

"I mean more GSD in the 'obviously abnormal' sense, I'm sure you're right about your old body. I'm not particularly vulnerable to engineering but I might be vulnerable to advanced biology, I'll take it under advisement."

"Ooh, you know what I should do that isn't staring at syllabi, I should get a codename. You don't have one either yet, right?"

"I've been thinking about it, but no," Lucy admits. "As a viral biodevisor, I don't have many non-villainous options, and I'm wondering whether I should just bite the bullet on that."

"I'm sure you can find something good to do with your powers if you set your mind to it, but I guess that doesn't mean you can't pick a villainous name." 

She really hopes her roommate doesn't become a supervillain. That sounds like a great way to get injured and/or have an uninhabitable room.

"Oh, I intend to do good things. It's just that the name is... problematic. There are plenty of biodevisors already taking up the names like 'Panacea' and 'Magic Bullet', and while I'm not thrilled with the implications, 'Pestilent' at least tracks with my GSD."

"Yeah, names are hard. I thought about Ex Machina for a bit, but it's a bit too grandiose for me. Upgrade is taken, Circuit is taken, Driver sounds too much like Mass Driver . . . I keep switching back and forth between Upload and Kitbash."

Lucy hums thoughtfully. "...I think I'd go with Upload. Kitbash sounds, I don't know, sort of derogatory. Which I recognize is ironic coming from the girl considering 'Pestilent', but. If you don't have to."

"Yeah, I guess. And Upload is nice and straightforward and definitely true and doesn't read particularly heroic or villainous. I think I'll stick with it."

Lucy's eyes wrinkle in a smile. "Well, that's one down. As for me... I don't know, I'll look a little harder, but I think 'Pestilent' might be my best bet. Maybe when I cure my GSD I'll treat myself to a different name."

"It sounds pretty name-y, at least, lots of two-word codenames sound like you're being all formal going by your first and last name both."

She snickers. "True."

"Well, that's our codenames sorted. Oh, we should probably talk about, like, Roommate Code at some point. I don't care about quiet hours because I can just turn off my mics and cameras when I need to sleep, but I like it pretty clean. What are your preferences?"

"Similar. I can sleep through just about anything. I most likely have stronger preferences about cleanliness than you do, but as long as I can keep my side of the room up to my standards I'm fine. As long as no one eats in the room, but that's obviously not going to be an issue. Really, you being a robot curtails many issues we could have theoretically had. Very considerate of you."

Margaret laughs. "I guess so! Oh, and given our respective powers we should probably have a rule that nothing that can move autonomously should be left alone in here unless it's thoroughly immobilized. Or at least that we should tell each other about anything like that in advance."

"I'm already very careful to cage anything that can move autonomously, and hopefully I'll be able to leave them in the Workshop most of the time. It's a good policy and I approve of both of us keeping it."

"Then I expect we shall make excellent roommates!"

Lucy finishes unpacking.

Something occurs to her. "Do you mind if I take off my mask when I'm in the room? I'll have to take it off to sleep, but not necessarily when I'm just hanging around. But it'd be slightly more comfortable for me."

"Go right ahead! It's your room, you can wear whatever you want."

With some relief, she unhooks the mask from her ears.

Her mouth is a pretty gruesome sight. She doesn't have lips, her gums are black, and the spotless whiteness of her teeth somehow just makes it worse. She casts a worried look towards Margaret, before remembering that Margaret doesn't have facial expressions.

Margaret is glad she doesn't have facial expressions right now, because that is seriously gross but there's no way she's going to comment on it. All she says is, ". . . I hope that doesn't hurt."

Lucy visibly attempts to come up with an appropriate response. Eventually she says "It does, but thank you."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Good luck building a fix." 

" . . . So when are you going for powers testing?"

"They said it was 11am in Lab D. I'm not sure how they could test my devisor level, but presumably they've figured something out over the years."

"Yeah, I'm sort of imagining them sticking you in a lab and saying "make something cool". I bet it's way more formalized than that, though, when I applied here they had me fix a bunch of broken things that were deliberately escalating amounts of broken."

"I guess we'll see."

Tomorrow dawns bright and early, as tomorrows tend to do. Powers Testing approaches.

And Margaret approaches powers testing!

Powers Testing is conducted by a weedy-looking man named Dr. Duncan. First she's shown to a computer and given a test. There are sections on memorization (increasing strings of numbers, skimming and immediately reciting paragraphs or pages of text), spatial reasoning in up to eight dimensions, and an absolutely brutal strategy game like a cross between Go, 3D chess, and the Game of Mao. There are also straight math and English and science sections, the last of which shades into the bizarre towards the end. (There are entirely too many quantities approaching infinity.)

Margaret is very intelligent and knowledgeable for a high schooler, but not inhumanly so. She gets some physics problems she would otherwise have missed by leaning on her mechanical intuition and on thought experiments about how a device working on a given physical principle would need to behave.

Dr. Duncan then lays out another array of gadgets for her to repair, just like the first powers test. There are a lot more crazy machines on the upper end of the complexity scale this time, though, including a few that don't seem to even be mechanical - a smooth marble sphere, for instance, and a crystalline flower. There's also a futuristic-looking pistol that just doesn't make any sense - when she pops it open, its insides have no real power source, just a complicated set of lenses.

This is even more fun than it was last time. Margaret fixes most of the gadgets--the marble sphere is a metamaterial that changes its density in response to ambient light levels, but it was left in the sun too long and needs to be chilled until the structure relaxes again--but the crystal flower and a couple of the others leave her baffled. "I think this one's a devise," she says of the nonsensical pistol, "if it ever did anything I couldn't tell you what or how."

He nods. "We include a couple of impossible ones just to throw people off - or to test for a theoretical 'super-gadgeteer', depending on who you ask. The flower's enchanted somehow, and the pistol is indeed a devise. Based on how easily you dealt with most of them, I'd have to say you're a rank 6 gadgeteer - very impressive. Now comes the physical test."

There are tests of speed, deadlift capability, endurance, et cetera. Breaks are at regular intervals, including opportunities to plug herself in.

One of the later tests appears to be another test of speed. She is placed on a treadmill and set to go at a certain rate.

Abruptly, out of the console pops a boxing glove on a spring, moving much faster than aerodynamics should allow it to.

She's a bit slower than human average, but her endurance and deadlift are a bit better. She wonders if they let you retake these tests occasionally; she expects all of those facts to change.

The boxing glove pops her in the head and she startles back right off the end of the treadmill.

"ACK, my eye!--I'm okay, I'm okay, just give me a minute to straighten my camera out."

"Oh dear," Dr. Duncan says. "I apologize, it's a standard test meant to test for danger sense and autonomic powers. The floor is supposed to be padded, but evidently it's not padded enough."

"No, no, it just got me at an unluckly angle and I had a screw loose. And no danger sense."

Dr. Duncan offers her a helping hand. "Well, it looks like at the moment you don't qualify for an Exemplar rating, but you're a 6th rank Gadgeteer and that's certainly something. I imagine you intend to enhance your chassis; anytime you do so and think it might qualify you for an Exemplar rating boost, you can arrange another test online and head down. No more boxing gloves, I promise."

"Oh, excellent. I do expect to make a lot of both physical and mental enhancements, so the option to update my rating is nice. Being a gadgeteer is just lovely."

He smiles. "I have to agree. I don't get as much time to invent, these days, but it really is just so satisfying, isn't it?"

"It really is!" And if that concludes their appointment, she will head back to her room and sign! up! for! classes!

She has eight slots plus Saturday morning, and self-study if she can get admin's consent; she's required to take Basic Martial Arts (or Noncombat Survival, but BMA is strongly recommended), Intro to Powers, and Gadgeteer Lab.

Recommended classes include Robotic Anatomy (Surpassing the Human Ideal!), Fundamentals of Nanotechnology, Intro to Fabrication Techniques, Exotic Materials 101, World Lit, Precalculus, and Mutants in World History.

This school has a class on surpassing the human ideal? How much better can life get? Well, she can only take nine of those ten things at once, that's not ideal. She should probably frontload the gen ed classes and put off either nanotech or exotic materials, but either of those could in theory be useful in designing the Best Chassis Ever. Or maybe that's just an excuse she's making to put off taking history.

After a lot of internal debate and looking at syllabi, she signs up for everything except Fundamentals of Nanotechnology: it would be easier to incorporate nanotech into herself later without a full-body revision, whereas if she decides to be partially made of exotic materials that's really something that needs to be taken into account early in the design phase.

Lucy returns from powers testing and possibly also lunch. "That was... odd," she says without preamble. "Hello Margaret."

"Hello! Is it the kind of odd you wouldn't mind telling me all about, because now I'm super curious."

She nods, removing her mask. "Well, he interviewed me about my past inventions - how long they'd taken, whether they worked on the first try, et cetera. Then he had me working with a protein-folding program, trying to make proteins for specific tasks - some of which were insane, by the way, one of the tasks was 'turn flesh into gold' - and he told me that based on the results I was a rank-3 Devisor. Which seemed a little low to me, but what do I know." She considers. "Also, there was a boxing glove on a spring at one point."

"Turning flesh into gold? All the different tissues? With one protein? No offense but Devisor stuff is weird. Also, yeah, boxing glove, that was a shocker, it jostled my camera and my left visual field was at fifteen degrees to my right for a minute."

"Yeah, I did not accomplish human alchemy today. I did some cool stuff, though, and they let me keep the protein designs, I'm going to see if I can springboard off of some of that."

"Ooh, nifty. Mine was fixing a bunch of broken stuff--" she explains excitedly about the metamaterial sphere--"but they needed it all back afterward. I'm really excited about classes, though, I'm hoping to have chassis version 2 done by the end of the semester and I'll probably end up using a bunch of what I learn in it."

"Nice. Not gonna just go piecemeal? I think that's how I'd do it, but you're not me."

"Well, there's a lot of interdependencies--need to do legs before arms if the arms are going to be heavy, need to do bigger batteries before anything else heavy so I don't have to charge every hour, need to have enough room for the batteries in the torso . . . I think the final result will be better if I do it all in one go. I can parallelize it with mental improvements, though, and those are easier to do one at a time."

Lucy nods. "And that's why you're an engineer and I'm a biologist, I guess."

Smile, shrug. "Any classes you're especially excited about? I can't imagine we'll have much overlap outside of gen eds."

She grins. "There's this one about theoretical applications of prions that I can't wait to start, and one that's just an overview of biodevises through history that sounds kind of boring but it's strongly recommended because stuff like that gives you ideas. Devisors have to have a lot of ideas."

"Yeah, it's the same for gadgeteers. I want to make a living selling my inventions someday, so I'll need to find things people want that nobody else has figured out yet."

"Or that they've only figured out as a Devise. If you could figure out how to make an optical computer that can be reproduced you'd be a millionaire at least."

"Yeah, that too, Devisors are a good source of inspiration."

The conversation seemingly concluded, Lucy flips open her computer and begins doing something or other.

Margaret flips open her computer and starts looking for campus jobs.

There's always space on the sewer maintenance team. It pays $40 per hour.

Regular campus maintenance pays $20 per hour.

There's an opening in the forestry services department, at $15 per hour.

There's tutoring, once she's passed a class here with a B+ or higher.

The campus store could use clerks, at $12 per hour.

She cannot in fact get sick from sewer germs, but she can still get grossed out. Maybe if her next gen chassis is very easy to clean. How does one sign up for campus maintenance?

She can send off an email to the current team, and they'll get back to her.

She'll do that, then. And then, since she still can't benefit from the cafeteria, she'll take an evening walk through the better-mapped parts of the tunnel system.

The tunnel system is a place of many wonders!

At one point she encounters a short boy with violently curly hair, who looks her over wonderingly. "Wow, who built you?"

"I built myself! Name's Margaret, nice to meet you!"

He jumps. "Oh! Wow, sorry, didn't realize - you must be new. I'm Elijah Camden, codename Nebbish. Um, this might sound like a personal question, but how's your surge protection?"

"Right, codenames, mine's Upload. And yeah, I'm new, no worries. My surge protection should be pretty good, but I haven't plugged into any crummy outlets so far. Why do you ask?"

"You're gonna want to upgrade it. Whateley has some kids who can cause electrical surges just by being near you. Bad enough when you're a gadgeteer, but I definitely wouldn't want to risk it in a robot body, you know? You also want some kind of magnet protection - maybe even a Faraday cage built into your head. Speedsters sometimes emit a magnetic field."

"Oooh, good to know. My head is already a faraway cage, fortunately, but I'll make sure to check all my safeties. I'm planning on spending this semester making a new body with nice lab supplies instead of dumpster-dived grab-bag, but it wouldn't do to get hurt in the meantime."

Elijah smiles. "Good, good. I'm impressed with the design sensibility you're showing there, if you really had to scrounge for supplies - you look better than some of the stuff that walks out of Workshop, I'll tell you that much."

"Thanks! I was pretty budget-constrained, yeah, I'm really looking forward to Workshop." It's clear from her voice that she'd be grinning if she had lips.

"Looking forward to seeing you there!"

Elijah continues down the hall.

Margaret will continue likewise the other way, contemplating surge protection and EMP hardening.

The tunnel system continues to contain many wonders, most of which are featureless concrete walls and some of which are locked doors.

Margaret conscientiously ignores the first two doors she finds to be locked. The third one is too much. She checks both ways to make sure nobody's looking, detaches a strip of metal from her wrist and takes a torque wrench out of her pocket, and starts trying to pick it.

It's actually fairly easy to pop open.

The room looks to be an autopsy lab. It hasn't been used recently.

Ooh, cool. Margaret makes sure the door won't close on her and looks around the autopsy lab before heading back out. She should get back to her dorm and see if she needs to register her codename or anything before bed.

There's nothing particularly interesting in the autopsy lab except a very old bloodstain in the corner, apparently overlooked by however many cleaning crews. It's unclear how blood could have gotten that far from an incision on a corpse, but maybe it was a particularly energetic one.

She reaches Whitman unharrassed. Professor Wolfgang greets her as she enters, from her office to the side of the entryway. "Hello, Margaret! I'm glad you got back before curfew, that would have been awkward on your second day here."

"Of course," she says. "Got to be up bright and early for classes tomorrow!"

Professor Wolfgang smiles. "Your enthusiasm is very refreshing, considering the attitudes of some of your peers."

"I'm pretty lucky--I've always liked school and I really like my powers. And the selection of Gadgeteer classes looks great, lots of stuff I'll be able to apply in practice."

"I'm glad! We do try to provide a well-balanced and practical education."

"So do I just need to be in this dorm by curfew, or do I actually need to be in my room?"

"No, you just need to be here. Lights out is up to you, though you shouldn't make too much noise after 10:00."

"Fine by me. Any other dorm rules I might have missed hearing about, beyond the basic 'don't annoy your dormmates'?"

"Hmm... no drugs, no alcohol, no sex, those probably don't apply to you but let's make sure they don't, alright? If you have a problem with someone, especially someone else in Whitman, go to your fixer, that's Desiree, she'll try to get it sorted out. And if you have any other problems, you can always feel free to come talk to me; my door's always open."

"I don't know where I'd begin trying to do any of those things, but I'll keep all that in mind, thanks." Okay, she maybe has some ideas about how she could have sex if she had someone to have sex with, but they're even lower priority than learning to taste food and Professor Wolfgang doesn't need to hear them.

"Excellent. Anything else you need?"

"Nope, just sleep. I assume I'll find out what textbooks I need tomorrow."

"Yes, typically textbooks are handed out on the first day of class. Goodnight!"

In the morning: classes! She has:

Basic Martial Arts

Intro to Powers

Gadgeteer Lab

Robotic Anatomy

Intro to Fabrication Techniques

Exotic Materials 101

World Lit

Precalculus

Mutants in World History

Do all of those meet every day, or do they alternate?

Well, Exotic Materials meets Saturday. Other than that, every day.

She has Precalculus first, which is exactly as exciting as Precalculus is.

Intro to Fabrication Techniques is next. After the syllabus is handed out, they get a broad overview of casting techniques and their respective merits, with an assurance that they'll go into much greater detail later.

Then she has Basic Martial Arts. As soon as she arrives she will probably notice that all the other students have taken off their shoes and put them in the corner, and most of them are sitting seiza, though not all of them seem sure why.

Margaret will also take off her shoes.  She doesn't have any socks under them.

A few minutes after she sits down, an extremely tall woman wearing a black bodysuit with her hair in pompoms strides into the room, followed by a younger man in a karate gi.

She looks over the class. "I am Sensei Amanda Tolman. Everyone who wishes to remain in this class will purchase a gi for practice. Unless otherwise notified, you will change into your gi before class. When the bell rings, you will begin in seiza position, lined up, as you see the more experienced students here. We will practice in a variety of situations, including street clothes, costumes, and real-life situations. However, most classes will be taught here, and you will be wearing gis. Any questions so far?” She does not pause for questions. "The students in this class have a variety of skill levels, and an even wider variety of powers. This will require the use of some unique training tools. In the dojo here, we will use a variety of tools and weapons. Everything from a simple bo staff to the bokken to simulate a sword. There will be similar substitutes for knives, guns, or even gas and explosives."

“The single greatest benefit of this training is that it will teach you to think. You will be constantly planning ahead, assessing danger, planning escape routes or attacks. You will study tactics, learn to sense weakness and danger, and change your view of the world. This training is actually more important than the hand-to-hand skills. You will also learn that any power and any technique has holes."

“This is a good time to mention waivers. By virtue of the fact that you are here at Whateley, I know that your parents or guardians have signed damage, injury, and liability waivers. That means that I am not responsible if you get hurt in this class! And you WILL get hurt, every last one of you. This is a rough class. But it is also worth it."

"There are many more advanced martial arts classes, taught by a wide variety of instructors, in a wide variety of disciplines. You may ‘graduate’ to those classes, once you have mastered the basic concepts of this beginner’s class. You should also know that Survival, with its own forms of 'combat training', is still open. You may transfer out of this class and into Survival anytime through next Wednesday. After that, you will simply receive an F in this class."

Well, this is every martial arts class stereotype ever. She'll just try her best and hope it's good enough. And get ideas for firmware upgrades.

Sensei Tolman continues as she picks up a bo staff. "My predecessor, Tatsuo Ito, felt it important to demonstrate during the first lesson that a well-trained baseline can take down a powerful mutant. I have no powers enhancing my body, no TK shell or Exemplar strength. Terrence Washington!" she calls abruptly.

The boy in question jumps when she calls his name. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Come onto the mat. And my title is not ma'am, it is sensei."

Terrence comes onto the mat. He's an inch taller than the already very tall Sensei Tolman, and he looks like a bodybuilder. "Sorry, sensei."

"Do not apologize. Just improve. Mr. Washington, you are an Exemplar-4 and a TK-3b: you can lift up to three tons, fly, and resist low-caliber bullets. As an Exemplar, you are also much faster than the average human, and your mind works at superhuman speeds. However, you are untrained. I want you to fight me."

Terrence blinks. "Sensei, I'm really strong. I don't want to hurt you."

"Then fight to subdue," she suggests. She snaps her fingers, and a large cage descends from the ceiling. "This is the 'capture cage'. If you maneuver me into it, I will consider myself neutralized. Conversely, if I do so to you, you will be neutralized. Do you understand the rules?"

He nods.

Sensei Tolman nods as well. "Good. We will bow to each other - but do not take your eyes off of me. Then, my assistant Michael-" (the younger man nods) "-will shout 'Hajime,' and the fight will begin."

The instructor and student bow to each other. Michael shouts 'Hajime!'

Terrence comes at Tolman with a bear hug. She ducks under his arms fluidly and hits him in the shins with the staff. He yelps and goes down. "Do better than that," she snaps as he rises.

He tries to kick her, but she flows past him and sweeps his feet out from under him. He falls again. "I believe I mentioned you can fly," she says. "That attack should not have worked on you."

He rises into the air, then swoops down towards her. Having prompted this attack, Tolman dodges him easily and allows him to plow into the mat. She allows him to rise again, only to grab him by the arm and swing him bodily into the capture cage. It sways gently with the force of her throw.

"Do you yield?" she asks.

"Yes, sensei," Terrence says sullenly. He climbs out of the cage and returns to his spot.

She turns to the class. "Mr. Washington is, by my estimation, the student with the most raw power in this class, but it took me less than a minute to defeat him. No matter what your natural abilities, you can learn to fight."

This demonstration of competence is impressive and continues to be every martial arts class stereotype ever. Which is good: the stereotype says she will end up awesome at the end of it.

Following the demonstration, students are divided into "has done martial arts within the last three years" and "has not". The former are tested on their moves; the latter are taught how to fall properly.

Margaret has not done martial arts in the past three years. She tries falling the same way the meat students are learning it and determines that it works about the same for her. 

"Good," Sensei Tolman says. "Like GSD cases, not all techniques will work with your unique body. Work on those that do."

"Yes, sensei. I'll be keeping the techniques in mind as I modify my body, as well."

"Bear in mind also that you are not bound by the same limitations as a human," Sensei Tolman recommends. Then she moves on.

Margaret will fall, and fall, and debate the merits of four arms vs two arms and where the extra arms should come out of, and fall some more until class is done or they move on to something else.

They are also taught the basic stances they will use, but mostly it's falling.

Next up is Powers Theory. Today they're discussing the Exemplar trait.

After that comes lunch. Well. It's the break the system automatically put in for lunch. Presumably she's not actually going to be eating lunch.

What is she going to do?

She's going to grab her laptop and register her codename before she forgets again! Then she's going to go the cafe anyway and do the Powers Theory homework and chat with whoever's there. Who's there?

Elijah's here! He's sitting with a blue boy who's all tentacles from the waist down and a green boy whose hair is full of flowers - no, made of flowers.

"Hello again! Elijah, wasn't it? Mind if I sit here?"

"Sure thing! Guys, this is Margaret, Upload, we met yesterday, she uploaded herself!"

Tentacle boy waves. "Max Sullivan, Tinkertoy. Charmed."

Green boy also waves. "Ethan Hart, Mulch. Also charmed."

"Pleasure to meet you both! Tinkertoy, huh, any chance you're another gadgeteer?"

"Devisor, actually," Max says.

"I'm a gadgeteer," Ethan contributes. "Also a psi and a wizard. I do a lot of things."

"Oooh, a jack of all trades! I've never met a psi or a wizard before, what're those like?"

Elijah grins. "You got him started."

Ethan preens slightly. "Well, I'm actually a Package Deal Psychic - that's where you've got an Esper ability, telekinesis, and psi, but you can only use one at once. But my TK is pathetic, and my Esper bit is gadgeteering, so I don't have a problem with it, I just turn on psi when I'm fighting and gadgeteering when I'm not. Psi is fun because you can get inside people's heads, less fun because you can't actually use it for very much without either consent or a fight. But I can create decent psychic illusions, and I'm working on this 'brain-zap' technique where you can make somebody sort of mentally hiccup for a second, so they trip or lose their train of thought or whatever. And magic - I don't actually have a Wiz mutation, I'm just studying it, but it's so interesting, you have to kind of gather up energy and store it so that you can do magic later, and there's some defined spells but if you're good enough at it you can sort of wing it? And you can bind a familiar to yourself for a little bit of extra power and an additional benefit as long as you give it something in return - I have these sprites that live in my hair" (he fans out his planty hair with his hands, causing a small cloud of sparks to emerge and then resettle) "and they let me manipulate plants, which is convenient because I'm a plant-based biogadgeteer."

"Do you breathe?" Max asks conversationally.

"Sometimes," Ethan says.

"A fellow nerd, excellent! So is your hair part of your mutation, or did you do it to yourself to give the sprites somewhere to live? I'm not a biogadgeteer at all, I do mechanical and software, but I can tell it looks nice."

He shakes his head. "This was all part of the package. I photosynthesize, too!"

"That's convenient, I have to plug in. But my next-gen body is going to have way more battery life--I'm planning to bulk up the torso to make room for a lot more batteries, plus a more shielded place to keep my processors, plus my next set of limbs will be a lot stronger and that means I need a bulkier torso to support them anyway."

"Nice," Elijah says. "If you want to put in lasers of any kind, I'm available, lasers are my thing."

"Oh, if you want a really good nuclear battery you should go to Manhattan, he's our teammate, he makes these great tiny nuclear batteries," Max effuses.

Ethan nods. "Long as you've got something decent to trade for them. Workshop economy, you know."

"Tiny nuclear battery sounds good, if it's not hard to maintain. I wonder if he'd like a robot arm he can mount to a workbench and control with his thoughts through a headset."

"Ooh," they say in unison.

"Depending on the manual dexterity, that'd be really good," Max says. "He's got MATD that turned his skin into concrete, see - he hasn't lost much feeling yet, but he's probably going to within a couple of years. Definitely worth a couple of batteries."

"Ouch," says Margaret and holds up her hand. Her fingers come to delicate but not sharp points, like the ends of plastic chopsticks (some of them may in fact be the ends of plastic chopsticks), with small touch-sensitive pads. "I can get it pretty dexterous, though he'll need to sit still for a time while I calibrate it to his brain."

"Josh's good at sitting still," Elijah nods.

"I look forward to meeting and potentialy trading with him. You said you were a devisor, Max? Got a specialty?"

He nods. "Everybody's got a specialization, it's part of the trait. I do hydrokinetics. Not always as useful in the combat sims, but devisor plumbing is a very hot field. Hydroflux charges as much for one bathroom as you would drop on a decently sized house. I'm not Hydroflux - you can tell by the tentacles - but I like to think I'm pretty damn good."

"Nifty. I need less plumbing than average, but I can certainly appreciate it. I'm all about the non-combat applications."

"Yeah, you look more like an autoclave kind of girl."

"Yeah, pretty much. You looking to go into business after school, sell fancy bathrooms and luxury autoclaves?"

"I don't actually do autoclaves, there's not much you can do to make boiling steam more comfortable. But I'm going to sell extremely fancy bathrooms, yes."

"That's pretty awesome! I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to sell yet, but I'm planning to start a business too. Probably something custom and expensive."

"I'm gonna make holdouts," Elijah says. "Not, like, weaponry, that's military-industrial bullshit. But a high-powered pocket laser can be a really effective tool."

"Not gonna say I'll never be in the market for a pocket laser myself. Never know when you might need some optics tested, or something heated up."

Ethan grins. "And I already got a patent on a breed of flowers with antidepressant properties, and I sold it for a couple million dollars, so I'm sitting pretty for a good while."

"Wow, nice! Once I come up with something patentable I know who to ask for advice on the paperwork."

“Nah, I’m not that great at paperwork, I was just lucky enough to come up with something really good in a niche that wasn’t being filled. See, the flowers don’t act like a chemical antidepressant, they’re more like one of those sunlamp things. So people can just buy a pot and keep it in their room and it ameliorates their symptoms. I went to Goodkind & Jackson and they told me to name a price, I said a million, they said ‘we’ll only go as low as 2.5, and that’s final’. Apparently Goodkind & Jackson is kind of like that.”

"That's amazing. What you did and what they did. And it's going to benefit so many people!"

Ethan beams. “I know! It’s great!”

"I can't wait for my first gadgeteer lab class!"

Conveniently, her first gadgeteer lab is right after lunch!

It turns out Ethan has lab at the same time, and he leads her to the workshop area and shows her the various sections. "I'm not as up on anything except bioengineering," he freely admits, "but you eventually get a feel for the place through osmosis if nothing else."

"This is so great! And we can just work on whatever we want all class period?"

"As long as it's legal," he says.

Margaret dives into fabricating a new head and torso. The head is going to have awesome cameras and microphones and the torso is going to have her important computing parts in the center of a lot of armor and both of them are going to have space for batteries.

Moderately awesome cameras and microphones are available! If she wants particularly awesome cameras and microphones she may have to put in a requisition order. (There's some very nifty sensory equipment out there.)

The campus maintenance team hasn't got back to her yet, so she still can't count on having money. Are any kinds of awesome requisitionable sensory equipment available for free, or does requisitioning things always cost money?

Requisitions don't always cost money - if she wants fifty pounds of lead, for instance, or some other object costing less than $100, she only needs to file the requisition form with a project summary.

(There's also the scrapheap, which is reputed to sometimes contain more expensive items which have been discarded when they turned out to be useless to whatever project they were requisitioned for. However, these rarely last long before being reappropriated.)

Then she'll start with the best cameras and microphones already available, but design their interfaces with the rest of her head to be easily swappable out for better ones. Eventually she wants to be able to see and hear a vastly superhuman range of electromagnetic and audio frequencies, but for now she'll settle for high resolution, a nice range of zoom, and maybe some infrared if she can get it.

There's a small drift of webcams and microphones that she can sift through, many of them fitting these specifications! There's also a couple of UV and infrared cameras, if she wants to try out some amateur surgery.

She can totally put multiple lenses on the same face and integrate the images on the software level. The result looks a bit insectoid, but in a cool way.

In that case, she can see into the infrared and ultraviolet!

Once she achieves this, however, it's time for Mutants and World History. Today they're learning about the effect of "Theme Heroes" on World War II.

Well, she can't see into the infrared and ultraviolet yet; she didn't make the new head hot-swappable with the old one because the old one has her processors in it and the new one just has batteries and sensory apparatus. But she can definitely go to history class! How did Theme Heroes affect World War II, that sounds fascinating.

Pretty significantly, apparently! Powerful mutants can easily turn the tide of battle if unopposed, and the Allies had several very potent heroes on their side, including the original Champion and the Mystic Six. The Axis had their own supers, but they tended to operate from behind the scenes, with the exception of a few like Kamikaze or Lebensraum. (The professor digresses to explain that while these names do indeed sound very stupid, at the time so did "Champion", and everybody was pretty much playing Calvinball.) The "hero advantage" was a major factor in the European theater, frequently leading to fewer casualties on both sides than would be expected from conventional warfare.

The professor announces before the bell that tomorrow's discussion will focus on the activities of the Axis' major supervillains, such as Weißfrau and The Necromancer.

Yay learning! Pity "the Necromancer" was an Axis supervillain instead of, you know, someone with the ability to bring back the dead. What's her next class today?

Her next class is Intro to Robotic Anatomy! In Intro to Robotic Anatomy, the professor shakes her head when she sees Margaret. "Despite the theme of this class, personal robotic assistants are not allowed without specific affordances on your IEP. Whose is this?"

Margaret laughs; it's a little staticky. "Oh, I'm not with anybody else; I'm a student. Margaret Perry, codename Upload."

She startles. "Oh! I'm so sorry, Ms. Perry. This is exactly why I keep saying they should include pictures with the attendance sheets. Are you operating a remotely piloted drone, or- well, I suppose you'd probably be an upload, given the name. Fascinating! And I can certainly see why you'd be taking this class!" She chuckles.

"No worries. Yeah, I'm an upload, and I'm really excited for this class! I expect it'll be good for my health." She's sitting in the front row and fidgeting with a bolt on her knee.

"Indeed!"

The class begins shortly after. Being the first day, it is another overview of what will be covered. As with Sensei Tolman, there's a certain emphasis on the fact that robots, while they can suffer from some disadvantages when compared to a human, are also not subject to the same limitations. There's also a lot of basics, like "when should you go for a ball-and-socket joint over hinged" (spoiler: it's when you want a wider range of motion and don't anticipate a lot of strain on the joint).

Margaret takes copious notes. Her joints are going to be very hard to damage, and capable of bending in ways humans can't. She isn't sure what the main use cases are for being able to turn her head 360 degrees or make her elbows go both directions (besides being extremely cool), but if she ever needs those features she will have them. Also possibly digitigrade legs; that might be worth trying both ways and seeing which works best.

The professor does not mention any potential pitfalls with these features on the first day!

After Robotic Anatomy she has World Lit, in which the class is assigned two chapters of the Tale of Genji to read. Then she's free to do whatever she'd like!

She'd like to go back to the workshop, if that's allowed!

Unsupervised workshop access isn't allowed until she's at least a junior with a good track record!

Two more years? How bothersome. In that case, how about the library?

Library's open!

It's very large, for a school library. Which is always nice.

So nice! Did any of her classes assign first-day homework besides lit? Because if so this looks like a pleasant place to do it.

Precalc has some practice problems, Intro to Powers and Mutants in World History have some reading, Fabrication Techniques has some online research she's supposed to do on die-casting. The Robotic Anatomy professor apparently doesn't go in for homework; nor, for obvious reasons, does Sensei Tolman.

What fun! She'll start with Tale of Genji because that's the least interesting, then the precalc, then the more exciting readings. She's always been a pretty speedy homework-doer.

At some point it occurs to her to check if campus maintenance has gotten back to her about that job yet.

They have! She can drop in Saturday afternoon at their headquarters and she can go on a test run.

Awesome! If she can get through all her homework before the end of reasonable dinnertime hours, she'll head to the cafeteria to socialize some more. Are any of Ethan, Elijah, Max, or Lucy around?

Lucy's here, sitting with a girl who looks no older than 10 and a horned woman who looks no younger than 70.

That's a nice mix of new and familiar people. She'll go sit with them. "Hello!"

Lucy's eyes turn up in a smile. "Hello, Margaret! This is Isabel, Alchemical, and Reba, Wicked. I met Isabel in Workshop because I made the mistake of complaining about them asking me to turn flesh into gold, and Reba's... her friend?" She looks to Isabel, the younger one, for confirmation.

"I'm everybody's friend," Reba, the older one, says with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Isabel shrugs. "She kind of is. Oh, by the way, I'm 18 and so's Reba, we've got GSD. Case you were wondering."

"Pleased to meet you both! I'm Margaret like she said, Upload. Being everybody's friend sounds awesome. Are you both Devisors?"

Reba shakes her head. "I'm a psychic. Isabel's a Devisor, though."

Isabel nods. "I do alchemy."

"That's cool. I'm a gadgeteer, as if you hadn't guessed. What sort of thing do psychics do? I haven't got that far in Powers Theory yet."

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."

"Amen," Isabel sighs. "I can get a certain amount of work done in my room, but for some stuff I really need aqua regia and a fume hood, you know?"

"I've heard some mentions of independent study projects; does anybody know how those work or who I'd talk to to register one?"

"You'd want to talk with your workshop supervisor for that," Isabel says thoughtfully. "You thinking of registering your bodybuilding so you can get extra lab time?"

"Yeah, I'd really like to get the new chassis done this semester and without cutting corners either. I'll ask the workshop supervisor; thanks for the tip!" 

"Hey, maybe you can get it before combat finals, give somebody a nasty surprise," Reba says with a smirk. "Maybe give yourself laser eyes or something."

She giggles. "Maybe! What are the rules for what sort of thing you can bring in, anyway?"

"As long as you carry it day-to-day you're good," Reba says. "This obviously inspires a lot of people to start carrying things around day-to-day in November but that doesn't really work, they know what you're actually comfortable with."

"Well, if I bolt it all on maybe they'll decide taking it off me is too much bother."

Lucy laughs. "Maybe I should get some grafts."

Isabel shakes her head. "It's not a 'they confiscate your shit' situation, it's a 'they give you a D because you came loaded for bear' situation. Anyway, you're fine if you integrate stuff with your chassis as long as you actually intend to keep it."

"Yeah, I'm just joking, I wouldn't want to make room in the chassis for anything I don't want long term. I'll probably just go for lots of armor and the best motors I can get and four arms, and I want all of those for other reasons anyway."

Isabel makes a face. "Man, I'd totally go for four arms, but my stupid GSD makes it impossible for me to meaningfully change my body."

"Ah, sorry to hear that. Does the same problem apply to prosthetics, or do you just mean you can't graft them on?"

She shrugs. "I guess I could wear something? I just can't modify my actual body plan or it reverts in three days. And with my specialty I've got no comparative advantage on prosthetics, just shapechanging potions that I can't use."

She nods. "Okay. I ask because I'm thinking of going into business selling, among other things, strap-on extra arms, but by the time I get that off the ground you'll probably have a workaround that lets you make your own."

"Probably not," Isabel says. "GSD is a bitch, but it's not as much of a bitch as fixing GSD. I'm not Jobe Wilkins; I'm gonna stick with therapy over experimental potions."

"You'd know best. Who's Jobe Wilkins?" 

Isabel frowns. "Right, engineering gadgeteer. He was this really brilliant biodevisor/biogadgeteer back in the aughts, the son of Gizmatic, crown prince of Karedonia, et cetera. Impossibly smart, even before he manifested - he was publishing papers at the age of ten, he manifested at thirteen. He invented this serum that could turn someone into a 'Drow' - basically a mid-tier Exemplar/Regenerator, but looking like Blackface Barbie because he was a teenage nerd asshole. This was already impressive, but it worked on GSD cases. Pretty much universally. Not a lot of them took him up on it, because again, Blackface Barbie, but the ones who did? Completely cured. Then, in a tragic but hilarious lab accident, he ended up injecting himself with it. Anyway, a lot of that story was irrelevant, but I'm not Jobe, is what I'm getting at, I'm not brilliant enough to cure GSD and I'm not enough of an idiot to try."

Lucy stabs her fork into a broccoli floret with possibly excessive force.

"I'm glad I'm already in Mutants in World History, I feel like public high school did not cover enough of this stuff."

"You're right about that," Isabel snorts. "But MWH and miscellaneous gossip should have you up to speed within a couple of semesters as long as you gossip with the right miscellaneous folks."

"Yup! Anyway, I'm done eating because I never actually started; I'm going to go see if I can track down the workshop supervisor. Later, folks!"

They wave goodbye.

Where is the workshop supervisor? Perhaps they are in the workshop!

There does not appear to be a supervisor in the workshop at the moment! There is, however, a pretty blonde girl with her hair in a high ponytail swearing under her breath at a robot head she's got disassembled across her workstation.

She looks up with obvious irritation, which transforms into confused irritation as she takes in the sight of Margaret's chassis. "Who or what are you?"

"Margaret, codename Upload, looking for a supervisor. Looks like you're busy; I'll leave you alone."

"Yeah, the supervisors leave after hours, that's why it's called after hours. Upload? That would explain why you've got a psychic signature... You're a roboticist, then?"

"Yes, I am! I take it you are as well?" She says, gesturing at the disembodied head.

"I'm a generalist. Specialty in repurposing. Are you a gadgeteer or a devisor, and what's your ranking?"

"Gadgeteer 6. How about you?"

"PDP, gad-6 TK-5c psi-2 wiz-4. You'll do. I'm working on this stupid robot for a... friend, I guess you could call him, mostly I just owe him a favor, but I'd rather be refining my power armor. I'll give you two thousand dollars cash if you can figure out why it starts to overheat whenever it's within twenty feet of more than fifteen humans."

"You're on! What's the robot for?"

"Assassination, supposedly, even though the killbot market is completely saturated. Boys and their toys, I guess." Tessa shifts to a nearby table, waves her hands in an intricate pattern, and summons a suit of lightly iridescent gunmetal-grey power armor, which she promptly opens up and begins tinkering with.

"Assassination? What? That's awful, why would they do that when there are so many non-awful things they could be doing."

Tessa waves a screwdriver dismissively. "He thinks it's cool. Like I said, boys and their toys. All the guys in Workshop are like that, they won't stop building guns and killbots and shit like that until they're in their twenties and they've gotten over their phallo-military-industrial phase. I mean, don't get me wrong, I make guns, but I also designed the thaumoelectric battery and the nanodentata and a more efficient personal forcefield than the US military has on their tanks. I'm not like 'gun, gun, grenade, power armor, gun, cool car, gun,' you know? I have priorities."

"Personal forcefield sounds cool! Right now I'm putting all my lab time into making a new body with the good materials we have here, but eventually I want to start a business selling brain-controlled accessories. Third arms and exoskeletons and leg braces that let you jump 20 feet in the air and stuff."

"Cool. Anyway, robot brain broken, fix robot get money." Tessa returns to her work.

"Yeah, I'm actually gonna take a pass on that, what if he turns around and kills someone I like with it? Also, I'm not supposed to work in here outside lab hours yet, that's why I wanted to find a supervisor in the first place. So it would've had to wait anyway."

"...He's not gonna actually kill somebody with it, he'd get expelled and go to prison and he's not a dumbass. And you'd count as working under my supervision, I'm a junior. But sure, you don't strictly need to help out and I don't strictly need to give you two grand."

"If he doesn't think he can use it, why is he even bothering? Also, wait, does it still count as working under your supervision if I'm working on my legs or does it have to be a project you have anything to do with?"

"Because he's a dumbass!" Tessa reexamines this statement in light of her previous assertion that he's not a dumbass. "Because he thinks guns and killbots are cool and doesn't think about the implications of that stance, I should say. I think if he actually killed somebody he'd probably faint. He's a wimp. And I could easily pass off your personal improvement as time spent helping with a project, but I'm not babysitting you unless you actually do make it worth my while. Maybe you could help me out with my armor, that's kind of like robotics."

"I probably could, control systems are control systems and I'll be armoring myself up eventually anyway," she says, drifting over to the bench. "So what have you already tried on this overheating head?"

"Uh, not much, I basically just got out from dinner and started taking it apart when you came in. He thinks there might be a bug with the threat assessment but if there is it's subtle, he did try to fix this himself before calling in the favor. On the other hand you're a gad-6 working in your specialty area and Luke's a gad-3, so maybe it'll just roll over and play dead when you tell it to."

"If it reliably kicks in at fifteen people that definitely sounds like a software problem, first guess would be something concurrency-related but a guess is all it is . . ." She pulls out her laptop and starts looking for a port to plug the head into.

The Whateley laptop has a variety of ports, one of which will do the job quite well!

"You don't have a direct code interface yet?" Tessa asks idly. "First thing I'd do if I were a gynoid. As-is I have a HUD with a nanojack for that kind of thing."

"I'll have one by the end of the semester, right now my head is literally a microwave with cameras in it and adding ports is a bother. Maybe I'll hack something wireless together when I do the next round of chip upgrades, enough cognitive speedup and typing with these hands will start to get obnoxious." All of this without actually looking at Tessa, or anything other than the code.

The code parts before her like the Red Sea. (Not really, she just finds the problem area.) It is indeed a glitch in the threat assessment routines - it turns out when there's enough targets to assess, it drops the least threatening to save memory, but neglects to appropriately mark the dropped target, so it assesses and reassesses them several thousand times per second.

It does not speak particularly highly of Luke's abilities that he was not able to find this glitch.

"Aha, not a concurrency bug after all, lucky me. Was the two grand for diagnosis and a fix, or just diagnosis and I should keep my hands off it?"

"Go ahead and fix it. What was the issue?"

"It was the threat assessment all right--keeps dropping targets and picking them up again." She starts looking for the unit test files so she can verify the fix once it's in.

Tessa laughs. "Christ, Luke, what is this, Little League Robotics Club?"

The fix is verified! While she's looking, she also finds a bug that appears to designate horses as enemy combatants.

"I'm pretty sure he didn't intend to make it hate horses, either. That's getting fixed for free; horses are great." (The killbot now designates horses as civilians.)

"I'd've left it in so he'd come back after the next round of testing, but that's what I get for subcontracting, I guess."

Robo-shrug. "Guess I'm just nice. Also that only works if you trust him to catch the bug ever."

"Hah, true enough. I guess this way I can just bring it to his attention and use that as extra leverage if I need it."

"Fine by me. How about that cash, then?"

Tessa emerges from the power armor's husk and pulls out her wallet, then counts out twenty bills and hands them to Margaret. "Don't spend it all at once. Or do. I don't actually care."

"It's all going to parts, I know that much. Still haven't decided which parts, though--probably a combination of really fast processors and a hard drive that'll fit a few centuries of eidetic memory."

Tessa re-immerses herself in the power armor. "Sounds good. I'll find you if I want more robotics done, or you can find me if you want to go ahead with that time-sharing thing."

"Sounds good! See you." 

"Yes. Goodbye."

Margaret heads out of the lab. Hmm, what to do now? Can't talk to the supervisor until the workshop reopens tomorrow, can't do homework because she's done it all, might as well go back to her room and write drivers for 360 degree vision. No sense having cameras in the front and back of her next generation head without some way to integrate the data. 

Lucy's already there, reading something on her laptop. She raises a hand in distracted greeting as Margaret enters.

She manages a "Hey" in response, then parks at her desk and tunes out the universe. Tessa was right about one thing, she should definitely have a complete development environment in her head so she can code while she walks; the next time she upgrades her central processor she'll have enough attentional capacity that she won't even maybe bump into things. And of course virtual visual overlays are much more convenient when you can put them on top of the sky and still see the full circle of the world around you.

She'll be at this until she has to sleep, unless something interrupts her.

Nothing interrupts her. Lucy eventually clicks off her desk lamp and climbs into bed.

The next day begins mostly like the first. During Workshop, however, she's approached by a boy who happens to be an enormous concrete statue. "Hey, I'm Josh. Manhattan. You're - Upload?"

"That's me! It's good to meet you; I was actually planning to look you up."

The concrete of his face stretches into a slightly nervous smile. "Ethan told me he talked with you and you said you wanted some batteries? And batteries are kind of, um, my thing. Well, nuclear microscaling is my thing, but batteries are- part of that."

"Yes! I was thinking I could trade you some nice dense batteries for a third arm you could mount on a workbench and control with your mind. I can make one that's good at fine manipulation, and with some practice it should feel almost as natural as your other arms."

Josh nods slowly. "Ethan mentioned that too. It sounds like a good trade. Um, I've got a range of batteries based on what kind of energy output you're looking for, or I can do custom if you're way outside my range - I've got sizes from triple-A to car battery, with corresponding but much higher output. Lifespan-wise, the isotopes I usually use are good for 300 years, but I can get some with a half-life of a couple thousand for an extra $150. I don't know where the school gets their nuclear materials but they're really efficient."

She shows him her expected power consumption and planned chassis dimensions, plus how much of that volume is reserved for batteries in the best case and how much room she can probably make in the worst case. "How much time between recharges can I get at those sizing options? Also, I'll take the three hundred year version, I don't know how my requirements are going to change in the next few centuries."

"...okay, miscommunication - 'battery' is kind of a misnomer here. We're not talking storage, these are generators. You wouldn't be recharging. -and yeah, I'd go for the three hundred year version too, who knows what's gonna come up? Maybe Morty's gonna figure out how to make things that don't explode and we'll all be using cardboard tesseracts."

"Generators? Excellent. In that case . . ."

She does math in the margins of her notes for a minute, then comes up with a range of energy numbers from 'normal day' through 'I attached everything on my long-term wish list and turned it all on at once.' The top end is quite high; her long-term wish list includes things like 'anti-gravity-based flight'.

"I don't need the very top of this range, I can have capacitors or actual batteries to store power for if I need to go all out briefly."

“Yeah, you’d need a car battery for that. But your target’s totally reasonable, you could make that work with a lantern cell. I’d recommend a backup too, given your stated specifications you’ve got just enough room for it and you really do want some redundancy built in just in case.”

"Yeah, I definitely want an onboard backup, and maybe a third one I can keep in my room and swap out if something happens to one of the other two. What do you want in your third arm? Both in general terms and any extras, if you want a built-in soldering iron or a second thumb or whatever I can do that."

He shakes his head. "I've got soldering irons, and I think a second thumb would probably just get in the way. I just want good manual dexterity and enough strength to pick up what I need to. I can make you a set of three batteries for two arms? That's one more battery than, um, arm."

"Sounds good to me! I should have the arms and the control headband done by the end of the week, and then I'll need to calibrate them to your brain."

“Great, that’s about the timeframe for the batteries too. Um, I should brief you on the safety regs. Basically - I make my stuff so that if you break it, it implodes completely instead of, like, leaking radioactive material everywhere or exploding, because that’s bad. So instead it implodes and leaves behind a lump of lead. So, if you break it, and it really shouldn’t break because it’s pretty sturdy and you don’t do combat stuff, but if it does, just let me know and I’ll replace it. And, uh, obviously don’t take it apart, that’s a bad idea.”

"Makes sense. I won't mess with them; they'll spend all their time in my armored torso and nothing should bother them there. Do they radiate detectably when they're running normally? I don't mind outputting a few bananas worth; just seems like something I ought to know."

He shakes his head. “Not even a banana. I take shielding very seriously.”

"Nice. I'm going to be shielding my processors against everything from EMPs to cosmic rays anyway, but one less thing to worry about is good."

Josh nods. "Good policy. I guess I'll find you, uh, next Friday? And we'll trade hostages."

"Sounds good! If you have an hour free around then, I can get them synced up to your brainwaves. See you!" She turns toward her workbench.

"See you."

Josh makes his way back to his own workbench! He has batteries to make.

Upload sets to making arms! They're largely based on the design for her own next set of arms, but with some changes due to different constraints. They have their batteries onboard, for instance, and instead of shoulder joints they have adjustible-height stands, weighted bases, and charging cables. Also there are five fingers that fold like human fingers, whereas Margaret's next hands will have two thumbs and the fingers will curl backwards as easily as forwards, each independently of the others.

No one interrupts her until the inevitable bell.

Tessa stops her in the halls later that day. "Hey, Upload. You still looking for that extra lab time? Because I figured out something you can do for me."

"Lab time continues to be the best time! What are you looking to trade?"

"Most of my suit's functions are manually controlled at the moment. No matter how much I streamline that management process, it's still distracting in combat, especially since I can't use my gadgeteer intuition without my telekinesis lapsing. So I want an AI that'll run it for me. Sentience is up to you, just make sure it's capable of responding to commands and adapting to new situations; I don't care if it thinks it's a real boy as long as doesn't go Westworld on me."

"I'm pretty sure I can avoid creating sapient life," she jokes. "Sure, I can get you something smart enough to do tactics but not smart enough to decide it wants to go be a vending machine instead or whatever."

She doesn't add "and you're a bit too flippant to trust you to take care of my kid even if that kid is designed for combat". She probably could create sapient life if she tried hard, but she's an unmarried high school student and for now motherhood sounds about as appealing as moving to Brazil.

"Excellent! I'll get the extended project paperwork filed and we can meet in lab C at 5:00?"

"Sounds good! I can start on the programming this afternoon when I'm done with my homework; it shouldn't need to eat much of the extra lab time except for the parts where I need to look at your suit."

"Excellent," Tessa repeats. "Looking forward to working with you, then."

"Same!" And off to her next class!

At 5:00, Tessa is waiting in lab C, already tinkering with a disassembled laptop.

Before she forgets again, is there a supervisor  around she could ask about independent study? If not, she gets back to work on arms for herself and Manhattan. 

Nope! After hours.

"You wanna take a look at the suit so you can get started on that AI?"

"Yeah, sure! Most of the AI work I can do in my dorm since it doesn't need tools, but I should see what you need it to interface with."

"Makes sense." Tessa gestures, and the suit appears in front of Margaret in all its gunmetal glory.

Margaret dives into examining it, paying attention to the systems included in it, how they constrain and interact with each other, what inputs they take, and what their interfaces look like.

The suit is odd. It's clearly a patchwork, the frame from one place and the propulsion from another and the UI and weapons from yet more different places. Each different system has been tinkered into shape by the hand of an obvious genius; Tessa's handiwork fits together pieces of wildly disparate tech like a Lego playset. Still, even though they all play nicely with each other, it's a lot of different systems made by a lot of different people. This is not going to be an easy project.