"Healing, or getting money for it?"

"Healing. The standard way to do it has a large security time margin which could be spent working on immortality if I could figure out immediately when I was good enough to fully deploy."

"Well, there's really not a way to tell for sure if you're good enough to deploy, in advance of internal certainty, without trying live subjects, but you could probably find somebody who can fix your mistakes who'd supervise you for a test or two."

"Yeah, what I'd hoped existed was something like that but for a longer time, smaller things, and progressively more of them, but that might not be a realistic desire."

"I think the consensus is that if you don't get it right it's not worth trying again for at least six months, probably longer."

"Yes, aforementioned huge security time margin."

"And unless you can do something ridiculously high-leverage public-safety-ish like a precog..." She waves a hand. "Nobody's going to pay you a living wage for trying something every six months. I guess in theory you could just live with me with my folks until I can avert eclipse disasters and rake in the big bucks, but it's probably a bad choice in principle for teenagers to make life plans on the assumption that their relationships are permanent just because there's no obvious reason why not."

"Prrrretty much. We've been together for three months, it wouldn't be prudent to plan for any length of time farther in the future than that."

"Yup." Hair ruffle.

"But we're totally gonna work out and be together forever," he adds.

She laughs and kisses him.

"It's not like you couldn't pay them back if they'd let you," she points out. "We're going to be insanely rich, we just have some awkward intermediate time."

"I suppose," he sighs.

"I hear you, I wouldn't be super comfortable with the reverse even if it weren't profoundly inadvisable for other reasons."

"Well a lot of my unease about the time between school and being able to blink someone into health stems from said reasons."

"When you're eighteen you can, if you have to, just take out a personal loan from a bank at a predatory interest rate. Some eclipsed do that. It's not the way to optimize your medium to long term earnings but it'll get your rent paid on a place while you learn your stuff."

"I'm not sure I don't prefer just going to college somewhere and then using my untold riches from future magery to pay off whatever student loans I need to. So far sounds like the best option, although working with that sex change company wouldn't be half bad for the interim either."

"Difference between college and a bank loan is that college expects time investment, spreads out the entire shebang. Plastic magery company doesn't look like they want your soul for twenty years signed in blood so they're a solid option too."

"Yeah but college is also fun and lets me get to know new people so there's that. And if we're still together by then—and we will be—whatever you end up doing will probably influence that a lot."

"What kind of influence do you mean?"

"Well, like, if you decide to go to college that will be incentive for me to also do that, if I can do it near you, because long-distance relationships are nnnnot ideal and no one's figured teleportation out yet."

"I'm pretty undecided on college but if I do go I'll probably pick someplace dense and urban, maybe New York."

"Oooh, New York!"

"Because I've never had a good chance to learn to drive, mostly, what with being at school away from home."