"Is there a type of cake called a princess cake or are you just doubling up on pet names?"

"It's a type of cake! Hemisphere covered in marzipan. I'll have the goons make us one when we're home, this isn't the right continent to get a good one out and about."

"I'm genuinely amazed that you know this many foods."

"They say to write what you know but I'm not a writer so I eat it instead."

"Shit, now I'm thinking about the actual meaning carried by the words 'lift you' and terrified I'm inevitably gonna let you down."

"I said 'pick me up', you can probably do it with enough squats and good balance if you do the thing where you balance me on your pelvis."

"Oh, yeah, shit, you lift with your legs. I'll make sure to incorporate those into my workout routine, insofar as you can call randomly doing pushups or situps whenever I have the energy a routine."

"Huh, if you're usually too tired I can whip up something short-term for that to get you going and then you should be able to bootstrap a bit."

"I'm less constantly tired now than I was pre-you, but not zero. That might be helpful, assuming no horrible side effects."

"I'll need more details on what kinda tired but it can wait till I have my lab."

Katie checks the time on her phone.

5:45.

She boredly reads through the event program to see if any biotinkers are looking for test subjects for interesting experiments.

Yes! There are recruiting human challenge trials for many things, some undisclosed and others including things like photosynthesizing skin, the ability to sense magnetic fields "now with 40% less risk of heavy metal poisoning", a third and fourth set of teeth after the fashion of baby and adult teeth, a vaccine for ebola, and an enhanced sense of smell.

Ooh, can she do multiple? Several of those sound interesting!

They don't all have the courtesy to list their contraindications in the program!

Let's go to the smell one first. Taste is famously 90% smell so that should be helpful for stuff.

"'Allo!" says the biotinker in the relevant booth, who has a larger than life model of the human sinus tract and is safety-pinning index cards with scribbled notes to various parts of it. He has a pronounced French accent. "Welcome, take a, what is the - pamphelette, yes, one of these."

The frenchness of this man has made her uneasy. She reads the pamphlet carefully.

It describes his work in French, English, Chinese, and Javanese, on extending the olfactory bulb's surface area and enhancing connections to relevant parts of the brain.

Any warnings? A notice about mutual exclusivity with other experiments?

Not in the pamphelette!

She takes her phone out of her purse and shoots a message to both her groupchat and Mo.

[guys/mo] I came to some guy who's running an experiment to enhance people's sense of smell but his Frenchness has me on edge

a lifetime of Pepe Le Pew cartoons and jokes about stinky cheese has given me a healthy suspicion around French people and smell

should i do it

basking robin: live dangerously
Aquinas: It doesn't seem wise to encourage further interventions on your person!

He won't take a scalpel to my things if he knows what's good for him.