Malak is circulating and looking for interesting people, insofar as "interesting" can be taken to mean "She's pretty sure she saw them on their way to the cafeteria so she can follow them back to the vicinity of her room". She really hopes this isn't obvious. No, no, no, - is that girl in pajamas?? and... flirting? Already? - OK, no, move along, no need to boggle at the dead girl walking - no, no - maybe, she looks familiar, from the spoke hallway by the stairs. Maybe enough to go on. Also she's obviously an enclaver, not Istanbul and probably not New York, so a good person to know. She pulls herself together and approaches. Her exact words are not rehearsed, but she's practiced how to make an introduction enough that she can do it in her sleep, which is good because sleep is a more debilitating condition than intense dehydration and nausea.

"Hello. I'm Malak, not Moloch, from Istanbul, not Constantinople. Creative writing or artifice, my affinity could go either way. You?"

"Marcy Park, Boston. Languages and artificing; my affinity is projectiles so it'd be a waste not to make guns. What's your interestingly ambiguous one?"

"Hiding. People, and things, so that they are hard to see, or maybe easy to see but hard to notice, or easy to notice but also easy to forget. I think. We could not find very many spells that worked for me so we don't know exactly where the boundary is, and it is a better gamble that I will be able to make my own or make artifacts for it than it is that I will find a great trove of these spells if I pick up Thai or something."

Actually, they are pretty sure most of those spells are in Arabic because a collection of secrecy spells would explain how Damascus and Istanbul have managed to keep all their best spells out of anyone else's hands for the last thousand years. But those spells probably also keep themselves out of the scholomance library, so Malak is stuck reinventing them from scratch.

Well, that's an affinity it would be bad to have as an enemy. At least she doesn't have any signs of being a maleficer or otherwise sketchy . . . any visible signs.

None of this shows on her face. "Oh, neat. Found anything that makes mals think you're uninteresting?"

"Not a personal one yet, but I have one for areas. We worked it into the wards for our house as soon as I was able to cast it. It helps a little? Some of them still saw through it but less than before, and it will probably work better when I'm stronger and have graduated." She knows that's an 'if', not a 'when' but a little bit of overconfidence can trick people into thinking it's warranted, and it's not like her affinity isn't a big boost to her expected survival rate.

"I'm going to put it on my door as soon as I've got the mana for it. I could do yours for a favor if you front me the mana and like your neighbors less than yourself." as if anyone wouldn't. Marketable skill an enclave might want after graduation, hint hint.

"Definitely worth thinking about. I'm stockpiling mana for weapons but that means I'll have weapons to sell." Though she also doesn't want to piss off her neighbors.

"If you did it to your house I wonder if you could do it to the cafeteria. Or even just one of the food counters, give us all a better chance of getting enough to eat. I'd help organize payment if you convince me you can pull it off." 

"Tragically, it doesn't work that well at my current strength. It doesn't make a place unnoticeable, just... less noticeable. I expect it to work on individual rooms mostly because there are other options around for the mals to notice first, like getting a seat farther from the vents. If I did just one of the food counters that might help, but mostly just the kids who get to the cafeteria first, one clear counter won't feed all of us and there'd be more mals at the others." Is this what enclavers are like? So sheltered that they never think in terms of "better you than me"? Kind of ironic given how the existence of enclaves is one of the best examples of that kind of thinking around.

... That said, the counter idea is a pretty good one as long as not everyone knows which one is safe. And she can change it up every time she has to refresh it... It was Marcy's idea so she deserves a tip-off as to which one it is, but maybe Malak should wait until the other girl has had a couple days for the reality of life in the scholomance to sink in.

"Rats, there goes my clever plan to get you paid twenty times for the same job and take a cut. Mind if I ask you an unrelated hypothetical question?" There are enough people milling around in here that she can use it a handful of times without worrying too much about asking someone who already overheard it, and it's a good one. Loads of people have heard of the prisoner's dilemma, but throw in a time and prediction dimension and you get something a little farther away from memorized scripts and attempts to look good.

"Sure."

"Alright, so suppose one day a genius space alien shows up--don't worry about how it got in, that's not important--and starts offering people a choice. It puts down two boxes, one clear plastic with three full mana crystals in it and one black so you can't see inside. And it says, you can take both boxes, or you can take the black box and leave the clear box alone, but the trick is, it put thirty of the same crystals in the black box if and only if it predicts that you won't touch the clear box. And every time it plays this game it predicts correctly what people are going to do, even though it flies away before it sees anyone pick. What do you do, in this game?"

Blink blink.

"I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. Just, ah, checking that this isn't a trick - people who've played the game before have varied their answers, right, it's not like everyone takes both and the black box is always empty." Mostly she's asking to buy time to think without it being obvious that she needs it. She knows - pretty quickly - what her answer would be but she's not sure why Marcy is asking or why she's asking it this way. Is it that the alien could be wrong, or just more... plausible? somehow? (She thinks this while she's speaking because it's not going to take Marcy very long to answer her.)

"Right, yeah, no tricks, some people take both boxes and the black one's empty and some people take just the one box and it has the charged crystals. And, uh, ignore the fact that all this handing out of resources would radically change the situation in the whole school."

Out of time, then, she's not sure what Marcy's game is here so she'll just be honest.

"Just the black one, then. It's like, um," she gestures at the people around them in a way that she realizes halfway through doesn't actually relate to her point at all. "Morality, you know? You do the right thing even when nobody will know, because God will know when He judges your fitness for Paradise. But, uh. Instead of god there's a space alien and instead of doing the right thing it's not taking a box with three mana crystals and instead of paradise it's... more mana crystals..." So really it's NOTHING AT ALL like that and you just had to open your mouth and start explaining before you stopped to think and put your words in order. Ugh.

"...Anyways. Why do you ask? I thought American wizards were usually atheists?"

This is a bit of a stumper because Marcy has been strictly instructed not to tell any of the theist students that there's probably no God and definitely not an omnipotent loving one. Supposedly it helps them, either through belief affecting the world or just through the comfort of a nice lie, and trying to puncture the lie makes people angry and also actually endangers them some so she shouldn't. 

What comes out of her mouth is "I wasn't really raised in a specific religion; it's just an example to ask about how you think."

"Ah, so you are a godless atheist after all!" She wags her finger disapprovingly. "You know, if you think this place is bad, wait till you see Hell." Smiles, so Marcy knows she's joking.

"So, fair's fair - how would you answer? I'm assuming you've given this one much more thought than I have."

That is pretty fair, yeah. "I agree with only taking the one box. The way I see it, it's about--being the right sort of person. The sort of person everyone can look at and say, 'that one will respond sensibly to incentives, so if I help her out she'll help me out and if I mess with her I'll regret it.' The sort of person who'll keep a promise even when there isn't any way to enforce it, because that's the sort of person who it's safe to believe a promise from."

"So - the atheist version of doing the right thing even when only God is watching. Because other people are - watching you with their guesses. And also a way to tell people that they'll regret messing with you without it sounding like a threat or an empty boast. Well done."

"That's a good way to put it." 

"Well, it was a pleasure meeting you Marcy, but as I understand it we're supposed to meet more than one person at orientation, and I should really get going on that. If you tell me your room number, I can come by later to check if you want your door hidden?" and maybe be able to triangulate where her own door is, but she's not going to admit to that mistake.

"429A; yourself?" She's the one they designated to give out her room number the most freely, so people who have something to trade will know where to find her. Franklin, who's going to be the long-term repository of their most valuable gear after this evening's swap-around, is doing the minimum nonsuspicious amount of socializing and will ideally not give out his number at all.

Well, that's embarassing. No way to avoid it, really.  Better to admit it than look like she's planning to murder Marcy in her sleep.

"Uh. I don't know, actually. I overdid the weight-limit optimization and didn't remember to take down my room number until I'd had some water. Pretty sure I can retrace my steps if I go with the after-dinner crowd and the halls are behaving but for now - " shrug. " - I promise I'll tell you tomorrow at breakfast, you did tell me yours."

"Oh, shit. Uh, if you find the right stretch of hallway you can check which one is locked the way you locked it?" Which isn't going to help if this is just who she is as a person rather than a one-off fuckup, but why point it out. 

"Yeah that's my plan." well, the 'find the right stretch of hallway' part is. She... does not remember how she locked her door. "God willing it's not too hard to find and all I pay for those extra bandages is a lesson in humility." There's not supposed to be that many mals out and about right after induction so probably all she'll face is the shame of embarrassment of knocking on a bunch of doors.

"Thanks for the suggestion. Um. Peace be upon you." And she hurries off. That had been going reasonably well until the end there, but now she has to go find a dark corner in which to die of shame take some deep breaths and pull herself together and find some people who aren't intimidatingly smart enclavers to meet.