"Anyway." She turns back to Atennesi. "What're your short term priorities, here - replicating me, getting me underway on magic so I'm oomphier, getting Odette further up to speed on Kith - I have named it, by the way, I'm calling it Kith..."

"Re-assessing strategic concerns based on the new situation--I don't think I need to keep nearly as much a secret from nearly as many people, given the new timescale on overthrowing the current regime, and I do have quite a lot of brainpower handy in the university staff, who might have useful insights--Odette, I might want your father and his colleagues more aggressively researching improvements to be made to the human genome--if anyone knows of any obscure languages I haven't heard of there's no reason not to make people speaking those--"

"They won't stick if they aren't used and there's a whole lot of them - that isn't a reason not to include them, just calibrating expectations."

"Someone might choose to use one for particularly private journaling, but agreed, it's not an exceptionally high priority. But someone might have thought of the balance issue, and it seems potentially relevant that it's easier to make people with a given skill if you know more about what the skill looks like--I don't think we'll be able to take advantage of that for the translator in particular, but that general kind of thing--also, projects which can be begun in the short term which will only work out in the long term with significantly more magepower than we have now." 

"Cool. When are you going to call the meeting?"

"That is an excellent question." He vanishes with a soft crack, then reappears with a woman who looks to be of mixed Asian and African heritage. "I apologize for taking you away from your work, Ms. Wang," he tells her, "but I need to inform the senior university staff of a matter of some but not immediately critical urgency. I need you and whichever assistants you select to find the soonest time available to call a meeting. Interrupting classes is fine but disrupting volatile experiments is unnecessary." 

"And you brought me here instead of telling me this in my office because it's important for Miss Zavier and this young woman to know, for some reason?" she asks, glancing at them. 

"Their part in this will be explained at the meeting." 

"Alright." 

He puts her back and returns. 

"You could have told her in her office and then told us that this event had occurred," Belamaveth points out.

"My ongoing professional relationship with Ms. Wang is such that this was not the imposition it would have been on a stranger and this seemed mildly simpler." 

"Fair enough. How many people is the senior university staff?"

"Twenty-seven. Would you like a list?" 

"Sure, why not - am I going to be presenting anything or just be presented -"

"If you have anything to say that I don't get to or that you want to say instead of me I encourage you to chime in and I expect they will have questions for you. I do not have specific expectations of you that you present anything." 

"All right, then I will not compose a speech."

After about fifteen minutes Ms. Wang comes in and reports that the meeting can happen in a few hours, here's the time and location she gave the senior staff. Atennesi thanks her and she leaves. 

"Good time for me to go wander around and come back for the meeting?"

"Indeed." 

"Do you want to wander around by yourself or should I come with?"

"You can come if you want! I have a feel for the place and don't expect to get lost but I haven't actually been much of anywhere before so a tour guide would not be amiss."

"Sure! What kinds of things would you like tour guided at?"

"...food," she says after a moment's thought. "I have never eaten food in my life."

"Right! Do you have any idea of what kind of food you'll like or should I just throw you at the University dining hall and let you try a bit of everything."

"I have no idea! Recommend me something suitable to the occasion of 'never eaten food in my life'."

"Chocolate, then. Chocolate is gastronomically critical. And...normally I'd say no spicy for your first time, but you were created not to mind pain." 

"I believe it was up there in the priority ordering, yes."

"I know just the place." 

"The place" turns out to be a fusion restaurant run by several-generations-in Genoshans with, importantly, a) really excellent curry, b) several desserts with chocolate in them, and c) Mexica spicy drinking chocolate.