Her roommate arrives a few minutes later, lugging two overstuffed suitcases. She offers Angelica a tired nod on her way in, then hauls the suitcases over to whichever bed seems unclaimed and starts unpacking what looks like half a chemistry lab onto the associated desk.

Interesting. 

Angelica fiddles with a ring on her finger and goes back to composing her latest letter to Nicholas Flamel, keeping half an eye on the other girl as she does so. 

Eventually she gets everything unpacked. The desk is now covered in glassware; she had to evict the provided laptop. She flops into her desk chair, turns it to face Angelica, and smiles tiredly. "Sorry about that. I wanted to make sure first thing that I hadn't broken anything. Hi, I'm Ellen."

"Angelica. Nice to meet you, I hope."

She laughs softly. "I hope so too. —don't worry about the lab equipment, by the way, it's a side project. Synthetic spider silk."

"I wasn't acutely worried. Is spider silk particularly useful? My scientific education was eclectic and audodidactic."

"It's very useful!" She lights up a little despite her tiredness. "Amazingly strong for its weight, so you can make cords that won't snap under heavy load or cloth that's light but tough."

"Oh, cool, do you have a sample?"

She laughs. "If everything goes well, I will in a few days! Otherwise you'll have to find a spider."

"Fair enough, I should probably be able to do that. I'll probably have to go into town, though, I can't imagine this place having cobwebs anywhere."

"I see what you mean," she agrees thoughtfully. "So. What brings you to Mind Control University?"

"I didn't like the idea of someplace like this existing and my not having gone to it. Never been a fan of keeping your head down and hoping nobody targets you."

"Fair enough. For me it's mostly academic interest. Never met a novel phenomenon I didn't want to study." She gestures to the chemistry set. "Case in point, I heard you could genetically engineer microbes to produce silk and now here I am."

"That sounds like a pretty interesting project! Not something I'd put that many resources into, given my priorities, but still interesting and useful."

"Priorities? Do you have something important on your plate?" she wonders.

"You know, stabbing death in the balls, that sort of thing."

—she sporfles. "Vivid!"

"Immortality is my highest priority, but I'm also working on resurrection!"

"Interesting. I know a few people working on life extension but I suspect the methodology is very different. Resurrection, as far as I know, isn't possible in my world without preserving the dying person ahead of time."

"Oh, yeah, my world has an afterlife, I've been informed that's not standard."

She smiles wryly. "That does seem like it would make things easier. If you find a form of resurrection that works without an afterlife, now that would really be interesting."

"My research on that is in its infancy, since I had no idea it was necessary until I got invited to this place! There's no principled reason it shouldn't be doable eventually, though. For values of eventually that are related to why I want to crack immortality first."

"I might be able to put you in touch with my life extension people, depending how contact between worlds turns out to work," she says.

"Mostly I'm trying really aggressively to bribe Nicholas Flamel."

"I have no idea who that is," she admits cheerfully.