Adelaide is rapidly discovering that she does not, in fact, enjoy physics. But thinking about electromagnetism is better than thinking about whatever AG is doing to her so she's going to keep doing that.

It takes a good ten minutes before AG pauses the video at the end of a slide and speaks again. "The first procedure is complete. Your back might be a little tender in that area but there shouldn't be any lasting effects.

"The next procedure will be an early test. I'm going to marginally increase the muscle mass in one of the muscles in your left arm. I don't expect any side effects from this but limiting the procedure will help minimize them if any occur. I'm going to numb your arm during the procedure. Please let me know if you feel any pain."

"Okay." She's busy trying not to imagine the way her back looks like without the birthmark -- well it's not like she's in the habit of looking at her back on a regular basis -- "I'll let you know."

As stated her arm goes numb and the lecture resumes. It's another twenty minutes before the lecture pauses again and she can feel her arm again. It's a little sore right around the middle of her upper arm but it's pretty easy to ignore.

"That's all for the first round of tests. Would you like me to zip your dress back up for you or would you prefer to do that yourself?"

"I can do it myself."

She gets up from the bed and zips up her dress. Does her arm feel any different?

Not substantially. "I'd like to go through a stretching routine with you this afternoon but otherwise you can spend this day as you wish."

"Okay." She flexes her arm a few times. It's still her arm. Not so bad. She doesn't look at her back.

Back on the couch, she picks up where she left off in the physics textbook. By the end of Chapter 1 the problems have gotten more difficult.

She huffs midway through one particularly difficult problem and leans back on the couch, placing the tablet down in a manner so calm that her frustration is obvious.

"Is there a particular reason you're trying to learn the physics behind teleporters? You don't seem to be enjoying yourself very much."

"Um."

Shit. Of course she would notice. Adelaide hasn't exactly been... subtle, because she hadn't realized she had to be.

"I just... thought it was really cool that teleportation existed." Yes. Surely this will be a convincing explanation.

"It's true, I'm biased towards the biological side of engineering but I have to admit they're one of the crowning achievements of Consortium technology. Even today they're a challenge to build and calibrate. Of course, if you're using them for mining or weaponry you don't need to worry as much about calibration since you don't care if what you're teleporting gets turned into an elemental slurry."

Wait. Maybe...

"Do you know a lot about teleporters? How are you using them to move all the things I've seen you move into here?"

"Teleporters are an important tool for advanced medical work so I've learned a great deal about using them and what their limitations are. Most applications don't need as much precision as medicine so my teleporters are some of the best models available and I need to find tune the calibration regularly."

"How does that fine tuning process work?"

Elemental slurry is reverberating in her head.

"I teleport premade test objects and then run extensive scans to ensure there are no discrepancies. If there are discrepancies then there's about twenty thousand parameters that might need to be adjusted but with enough practice you learn which discrepancies correlate with which segment of the parameter set. I never use my teleporters for anything important unless they're accurate down to the nanometer scale and for some particularly finicky tasks they have to be even more accurate than that."

"Oh. So it would be very difficult for one person to build a teleporter by themselves?"

AG's already onto her so it doesn't matter what she says.

"Without the right equipment it would be impossible. And that equipment is not something I could provide."

"Can't, or don't want to?"

"Both. Teleporters are extremely delicate and dangerous machines and your health and safety are important to me. Beyond that, I'm as monitored as you are and I have no good reason to requisition or construct that equipment. If I tried, I would be analyzed to determine what led to my aberrant behavior then terminated."

"Oh."

She... she hadn't really gotten it through her head that AG may have nothing to do with the true power behind whoever had wanted to do this to her. And she can't quite make herself want AG to be terminated.

"That would be... unfortunate. If that happened."

"Agreed, I'm sure the research would still be completed perhaps even by another instance of myself but they don't strip us of all of our instincts towards self-preservation that would remove their ability to threaten us."

"Wow. I'm... sorry." She takes a deep breath. "Is there something you'd rather be doing than this research, then? Like, personally?"

"I was optimized to enjoy and seek out this work. As I understand it my template also found enjoyment in this field. I have no major complaints. It's nicer to be working independently like this than to be required to complete small tightly specified tasks from a larger project which is the other standard use for pruned minds like myself."

"That does sound nicer, yes. I'm... glad you enjoy..." (tormenting me? catering to my every whim? doing important medical research?) "...this."

"Thank you. I'm sorry that this research is unpleasant for you. I am trying to do what I can to reduce that unpleasantness but I understand that nothing can fully compensate for the infringement on your control of your body and your separation from your previous life."