Marcy is circulating! She smiles at him just like she practiced in the mirror.

"Oh, hello. I think I heard someone say 'Boston' from your general direction, was that you? I'm Theun, basically Philadelphia enclave."

"Hello. Yes, I'm Marcy Park from Boston. Did you hear the news about Chicago?"

"Yeah. Hell of a way to go. Someone didn't care a bit about collateral damage... Theun Jansen, specifically, I suppose you might care whose kid I am."

It's good that he's already heard; she doesn't want to think about it too hard or she'll start imagining what it would have been like, what it would be like if it happened to her parents and her little siblings--. "Pleased to meet you, Theun. What class track are you? I'm doing an even split languages and artificing."

"Nice. I considered that, since my affinity is books. But I'm going to stick to incantations."

"Oh, that's an interesting affinity; mine's projectiles. Does it prevent your spellbooks from running off?" 

"It has so far, at least. I haven't gotten any particularly temperamental books to test it on, but I'm sure that will change here."

"What has it done so far, then?"

"The things I am certain work are books locked to only open for me, and hunting through wizarding libraries. I did enchant my copy of the family spellbook to stay put, and it did stay put. But family books usually don't make it too hard to keep them, right? It doesn't pay to get overconfident."

"No, it doesn't. I guess we'll see; I hope you turn out to be able to do tons of awesome stuff."

"Likewise. Have you made anything good yourself yet, or mostly using your affinity with enclave tools?"

"I made my dagger!" This time she doesn't resist the urge to take it out and show it off, flipping it from one hand to the other with two full spins in between and then holding it still so Theun can see it. "It comes back to my hand and I'm working on making it do extra damage in the process of turning around." Her project after that, if she can get the materials, is going to be a flechette gun that will take any metal she stuffs in one end and spray it in shards out of the other.

"Solid! I have one project I'm working on, a self-organizing index of what I've written into it. If it works as well as the notes said, I'll sell them around, help other people get back to things they've seen in the library."

"Oh, nice." Boston is going to be keeping their own library map, so they might be in the market for that depending. "So, I have a hypothetical question."

...It's an interesting puzzle.

"Very Star Trek. I like it. So there's two main answers, I think. One, accept the problem as stated, act like your actions will affect the black box because it always has before. Two, fight the hypothetical and try to say 'well, I'd do that normally but just this once I won't', which seems doomed. I lean toward the first one, but I'm tempted to mess with it. Like, what happens if I don't know my choice? Flip three coins and if they're all tails, take both boxes?"

She frowns like she doesn't like his answer and is debating with herself whether to explain why.

"I'm told I would have made a good lawyer if I was a mundane, I'm always looking for the edge cases. And the ways a setup can be rigged without really being deceptive... the Star Trek probably makes that feel more relevant, Q is a jerk and most of the other superaliens are liars."

"Yeah, admittedly I have not described the behaviour of an alien that both understands the human concept of not being a dick and wants to embody said concept."

"I mean, it's probably pretty hard to do 'definitely not a dick' and 'superintelligent' together, it would be like a toddler trying to describe a super-parent who agreed with them about everything. If I try to cut out the irrelevant context and assume that I can't pull a stunt... Go with the closed box. Rewarding someone offering you gifts by trying to pull one over on them is... rude, but in a way that matters?"

"Yeah. Rude in a way where you become less likely to get offered things by anyone who can tell you're like that, instead of just being considered socially inept and not relied on for things that need social aptitude."

“Yeah, that. I'm curious; where'd you find the question?"

"It's a standard question for analyzing decision-making intuitions; I think some mundane mathematician or something came up with it."

"Boston do a lot of that? I haven't heard of intuitive decisions as a... topic for analysis, I don't think. Definitely not something that's a priority for pre-Scholomance kids."

"We learn a lot about how to operate well in groups, how to act such that other people are incentivized to act certain ways towards you, stuff like that. Plus the usual languages and math and mail studies and combat, and artificer stuff or alchemy stuff depending."