"Yup, that's what happens when you tell your competition, 'Hey, photocopying is a thing that you can do.' I don't know why you thought any different."

"Next time I'll have a patent lawer."

"Good, good. Glad this has taught you well."

"Even though I'll use my knowledge to defeat you? Mwahaha?"

"Hey, my entire motivation for getting into this business is, 'Let's everyone try to learn things' so.... Yes. Knowledge for all."

"Well, there's learning Earth Science and then there's learning - marketing and manufacture."

"Are you personally in a position to hamstring the entire world? Should I be polishing my resume for you to get in on whatever cool world-changing thing you are doing?"

He snorts. "I wish. No, sorry, but if I find something I will keep you in mind. There's lots of things I would fix if I could."

"Me too. Haven't picked one yet. I have a list in order by ratio of upside to likelihood with margin notes about fallback positions from the requisite college majors and skillsets."

Darren smiles at her, then replies, "That's pretty impressive. My goals on the matter are, 'I don't know, science or social services or something, I guess.' Science because I'm good at it and it can be used to improve lives everywhere, social services because it's kind of a mess."

"My list could be summarized as 'medicine or politics or something I guess'."

He snickers. "Both good things, if used right. I don't have the backing to get into politics, you need either lots of money or lots of charisma and I don't meet either requirement, I think. But it's an option, if I ever become incredibly rich. Or charismatic, I suppose."

"I wasn't necessarily thinking elected office, although I could easily fail hard enough at charisma to be hedged out of appointed positions, too. 'Politics' also loosely covers things like working for activism organizations. The ACLU or whatever."

"Aha. My mind went to, 'Gets up there and speeches at things and is hopefully not horrifically corrupt' instead of other options. I need to think more outside of the box, apparently."

"Yes. What are you even doing in that box? Is it nice there?"

"Sure. You can just keep a little nest in your box."

"I'll come back to visit with trophies of my outside-of-the-box explorations, and put them on the walls or shelves or something. The box will end up very nicely decorated by the end of it."

"Sounds crowded, with all that stuff."

"Well I'll have to get the box renovated, of course. To make room."

"Expand the box according to the findings of your explorations."

"Exactly. Anything less would be a waste."

Bella giggles.

Darren giggles, too. "It won't even be recognizable as a box when I'm done with it."