"How's that coming?"

"Close but not done, I want to add a couple more safeties that will shut it off and let someone reset it if it overheats or gets forced to a different voltage or similar. Basically the equivalent of circuit breakers and surge protectors and so on, so people will have a hard time injuring themselves with it even if they do something silly."

"But Margaret, people never do silly things."

Margaret cracks up. "Oh, I wish. Last week I got a website comment from someone complaining that their invisibility ring didn't let them open doors without anyone noticing."

"I'm not sure I want them to have an insubstantiality ring!"

"Neither am I! At least from the sound of it they seemed to have figured it out before doing something suspicious in front of a human. I just keep putting more stuff in the FAQ."

"How long is it now?"

She reaches over to her laptop and switches tabs. "Twenty-seven things. About half actual questions I've been frequently asked and half things nobody asks because they don't realize they really need to know."

"What's in the second category, and are you sure everyone reads the FAQ?"

"Let's see, there's the not opening doors thing, the thing where it doesn't make you inaudible--though to be fair some people do ask that--the reminder that it will stop working if you pry the stone out and replace it, which I don't think I've had anyone actually succeed at but one of these days someone might, . . . one about how it will work for anyone who tries to use it, which would probably be more of a problem if it didn't, and that's most of the important ones that aren't repeats of stuff on the product page."

"Wonder what-all people are getting up to. I guess nothing so high profile we've heard about it."

"Yeah, I think it's mostly medallionless people who want to see outside their Avalons. Which means we're probably my biggest competitor, ironically."

"Hm?"

"I expect a bunch of people who would have bought invisibility are going to buy medallions instead, that's all."

"Well, that's probably better. Maybe you should up the price of invisibility, encourage it."

"Yeah, that's an excellent point. Medallions were a lot harder to invent but I think they're actually easier to use without getting into trouble."

"And harder to make trouble with."

"Yeah. I haven't heard anything about anyone misusing invisibility, but there could be people, I don't know, spying on their neighbors and shoplifting and it might not have gotten back to me. Medallions are a better deal all around."

"I worry a little that some people are deterred only by expense from getting them for small children and if they're ever twenty bucks discretion will crumble like a wet paper bag."

"Probably not the best way for the masquerade to come down, yeah."

An alarm clock beeps; she reaches over and turns it off. "Sorry, hang on a minute, I need to photograph my questionably immortal tadpoles." 

"Gosh, okay."

"Did I forget to tell you about this?" she asks, grabbing the Polaroid camera and the canister of tadpole food and getting to work. "I'm trying a bunch of spell variants to see if I can get one that still lets them turn into frogs but then prevents them from dying of old age, but it's slow going because they're only just starting to show signs of metamorphosis now. I might do the next round of experiments on fruit flies and just deal with the risk of them escaping."

"Oh no, immortal fruit flies. Would swatting them still work?"

"It ought to, the incantation I was doing just talks about aging. It shouldn't even affect the second generation. Though if I did accidentally find a way to make people unkillable that would probably be worth a few unkillable fruit flies."

"Yeah, fruit flies are no big deal, just stay away from mosquitoes I guess."