"Hi Dennis! Hi Cynthia! Brenda's going to show me her art."

Cynthia's head bobs to inaudible music; she doesn't respond. "Nice to meetcha," says Dennis.

Brenda leads Margaret through the hall and to her room - it's a ground floor flat, probably convenient if you're mostly snake. There are display racks of wire-wrapped jewelry and a couple of sculptures - a wire tree with gem chip fruits, a wall-hanging rectangle made of chunks of metal and smears of paint.

"Oooooh!" says Margaret, gazing at the jewelry. "I especially like this tree, it's really well done."

"Thanks! But it's a hundred forty dollars so Joel hasn't been able to move it yet."

"I'm afraid I can't afford to buy anything; I've been spending most of my allowance on restaurant lunches the days I'm at the library all day. I bet you'll find someone to buy it, though, it's great."

"I hope so. In the meantime it sits here between art fairs and I make most of my money off my waitress job and these things." She flicks an earring.

"Where do you get your materials; is there an art store here in the Avalon?"

"Yeah. I mean it's not as full featured as a regular art store but they can do special orders."

"That's pretty cool. What stuff do you usually end up having to order in?"

"They stock my kinds of wire regularly now, I go through them enough, but I have to order all my shiny rocks."

"I guess that makes sense. It's good that they've adapted to you a bit."

"Do outside stores not do that? If they have a regular who goes through a lot of stuff?"

"I don't actually know, I get most of my robotics club and hobby stuff from the junkyard and they just have whatever people throw out. I guess restaurants will get used to cooking something the way you like it if you order the same thing every time."

"I guess it'd happen less outside since a lot more people might go there and all those people have a lot more options."

"Yeah, I expect so. Less consistency of customers from week to week."

"It must be really different."

"It's pretty different, yeah. Lots more people."

Brenda sighs. "Well." She picks up a pair of pliers and a work in progress.

"I should get home; my parents will start worrying if I'm out much later. Thanks for showing me your art and your house!"

"You're welcome!"

Home and zzzzzz. The next day she accumulates as many worms as she can find before her parents get home.

Now she has a lot of unhappy worms.

Timer: start. Mad science: commence.

These two get stuck in a cup but otherwise left alone. These two get repeatedly harassed with the eraser end of a pencil but not injured. This one gets stabbed and left to bleed out. These two get stabbed and healed, then stabbed again and healed again. These two get stabbed once and healed five times, then stabbed again and healed another five times. And this last one gets cut in half and then healed repeatedly until it either dies or appears to have stabilized (she keeps count of how many tries this ends up being either way). 

Control group are doing OK. Harassed worms are also doing OK. Stabbed worm dies. One stabbed-and-healed-twice worm lives, the other expires. Stabbed-and-healed-x5 worms both live. Cut in half worm dies between healing two and three.

Repeated healings: useful. All the living worms and worm-corpses go out the window. The rest of the evening is spent prepping dozens of copies of the diagram and checking the late-night bus schedules.

Three hours after her parents have gone to bed, Margaret sneaks downstairs, memorizes the location of her mother's keys, grabs them, and slips out of the house. There's a bus that goes close to her mom's vet clinic, and nobody works there overnight.