"Yup. Always need people to run the virtualities. Do tell about your moonshots."

Maggie's lights up a bit. "I'm interested in brain-computer interfaces. Things for augmented memory, say, that could work on non-psions. But the real holy grail would be the ability to store a person's brain on a computer. You could get scaleable immortality without repeated mage de-aging that way, and backups so even if you got in a fatal accident you'd just be out a day's memory."

"Considering the current quality of virtual existence you might have some uptake problems but I guess people could hang around waiting for upgrades."

"Well, I'm more imagining robot bodies that interface with a non-virtual world, but yeah. Either way, better waiting around than dead."

"Less prior art on robot bodies with decent sensoria."

"Yeah, it'll be a lot of research on the magic side and on the engineering side wherever I end up going with it. Fortunately I like doing both."

"Sounds great! I hope you get somewhere with it, it'd be nice if eternal life were more accessible."

"Yeah. Of course you won't need to worry about it, precogs are super useful, you'll be able to afford de-aging for sure."

"That is my cunning plan!"

She giggles. "Putting it like that makes you sound like a supervillain. 'I am going to . . . prevent various disasters! Muhahaha.'"

"Bwahahaha!" Isabella cackles.

Maggie smiles and fidgets with the end of her braid. Isabella does an excellent cackle.

"So, um, what classes are you taking in between working on your cunning plan?"

"Gen ed stuff and econ and history of psionics."

"I've got econ too, and precalculus and C++ and chemistry."

"Oh, when's your econ?"

"Tuesdays and Thursdays at one."

"That's not the same as mine, oh well."

"Too bad, it would've been nice to be in a class with someone from my hall. Maybe one of my other hallmates will overlap with me in something; I haven't met anybody else yet."

"Most of 'em are cool. That's Myeisha over there."

Myeisha waves.

"Uh, Jackson is less cool but he doesn't bother subs," Isabella goes on.

Maggie waves back at Myeisha. 

"That sounds troublesome, what sort of bothering does he do?"

"He kneels at people, mostly at mealtimes."

"At people, like, in their personal space? Awkward."

"He doesn't usually touch us but he gets really close and if we tell him to go away... well, he does, temporarily, but, you know."

"But he got you to tell him to do something." Disapproving headshake. "That sucks."