"I wouldn't say we trust each other absolutely, we're still taking whatever cheap precautions we can come up with, but there definitely isn't--politicking." Which is good on account of how Kanimir openly admitted he was terrible at that.

She looks to the rest of them for confirmation. 

Kanimir gives a wry smile. 

Idarai hesitates slightly, then nods. 

Nod. "And there's three more too but they went to the chi teacher instead."

"Good to know. You can try to start them on what I give you, if you want, or they can come see me later." 

"Cool, thank you.

Why do you work here?"

"It's a good source of resources and connections. And young minds are done no favors by being taught only by people who would come here just for the hell of it."

Nod.

"Mesmerra is...single-minded. But practical. I advise you to figure out what use of what you learn here you can stomach, and spread it as widely as possible."

"Hm." 

"You are young yet, and small. Mesmerra's favor is a useful tool at this point. You cannot yet afford to disdain any such." 

Edie...does not look entirely satisfied. But she doesn't say anything. 

"Are there ways to get her favor without mind controlling people?"

"Spreading self-help hypnosis techniques, for example doesn't involve directly mind-controlling anyone. If you mean is there anything that doesn't involve mind control at all, then no. Not to the same degree, at least. She isn't an ordinary person, who cares about mind-control for reasons stemming from other factors within her mind. She is of mind control. She cares about it axiomatically." 

"I guess self-help hypnosis might be fine."

"I could find some people I trusted and instruct them in ethical use of some of this stuff...I'd rather have people I've known for a while, but I can probably find more than nothing among the townies. Mesmerra said we had to get permission to bring townies onto campus, not that people we got permission for had to be enslaved." To the professor: "What does it take to get permission to bring a townie on campus?"

"Special privileges, such as bringing townies on campus or extra rooms, are usually awarded in response to the completion of substantial extra-credit projects. I can assign you one, but only after I've assessed your aptitudes and gotten you started on the basics." 

Edie picks up one of the three-dimensional puzzles and starts poking at it.

"What are examples of substantial extra credit projects?"

"The thing about extra credit projects is that teachers have a great deal of discretion in assigning them, which means that different professors will tend to have, hm, personal styles, in assigning extra credit projects. If I tell you about extra credit projects I've assigned in the past, or projects that I've heard of from other professors I've worked with, then that won't necessarily tell you much about what the extra credit projects the other teachers here now are going to be like. Also, extra credit projects tend to be heavily customized to the student, one way or another. That being said, extra credit projects I've seen include a multidisciplinary project to use both magic and hypnosis to enslave the entire ruling body of a major nation, in such a way that if either component were removed, the takeover would immediately fail; a project to design an uplift program that would aid a stone-age world in climbing the tech tree all the way to nanotechnology in less than a hundred years--that one didn't have to be implemented, just designed to the technology teacher's satisfaction--a project to master, to my satisfaction, a magic system that the extra credit recipient wasn't natively talented at, in a way that would broaden their holistic magical potential--a project to design a virus, transmissible entirely through scent chemicals, that would both enslave the virus's host to the scent's designer and cause them to begin outputting the scent in pheremonal form." 

"Wow. Okay. Thank you so much for the aptitude tests, I really am excited about magic under all my underlying dismay."

"I...can't help but notice that you didn't give the 'didn't have to be implemented' caveat about the viral pheremone thing." 

"Correct." 

"Thanks, all my nightmares being about murder robots was getting samey."