The succubus clinic sends her a courtesy reminder about her appointment tomorrow.

Right, she already has the alarm for that set.

...She is going to write a note about questions she has for Dr. Marleth.

- CRISPR/Retrovirii, use as ritual catalysts?

- Lilim bloodlines, impact thereof on sorcerous potential

- Photosynthesis?  Photothaumosynthesis?

- How does the magic-storage obelisk work, even?  There's a vague impression that it's based off of bedrock and possibly life-of-the-planet -

- Chameleon skin as potential sigil anchor

- So how do esoteric pigments get coded for, she's working on the thing and she wants to get the API pretty close to what succubi already know how to do.

- Bring product-so-far; get anatomy reviewed/input.

- Have a product-so-far.  Right now it's barely diagrams.

Aaaaanywho. Holocrons.

...Oh boy.  The triplex-bonding thought experiment she just performed is very insistent that she needs to use them here.  In a cubic structure.  Goddammit.  Maybe if she makes them just be single special bonders...  Or, well, there's x-y-z, in 3D...

Packet received from [Witch] NNE 1-3km

Hey, you need to fucking stop leaking mana all over the place, newbie.

...It'd probably be an entirely different command-set, though, now that she's really thinking about it.  Something that twiddles an existing bond, rather than forging three separate novel kinds.  She could work with that.  Maybe a pi and tau operator, for the yellow and red 'sine-wave' bonds?  With the third part of the complex being a 'regular' bond, again.

Yeah.  That would work.  Now to just actually realize it.

Hmm.  Merging the OM and Spacechem milieux seems to really be her best path forward, here.  The instruction-tape, but also free-moving waldos...

Fuck it, she'll figure this live.  It's not like she can't just...  Use green waldo to write like a tape --

What.

Dear sweet mother of fuckor.

What the hell?

She pulls up an IM client out of sheer frustration at the idea of having to deal with the networking stack, and wings a message back -

...If I was aware I was so doing, I would in fact have stopped.  As-is, I'm not aware of any present drains upon my mana reserves.  Also, the hell is my signature doing all the way over there?  I literally haven't been in your direction.  Ever, not just since I started poking around.  ...You seen any weird magivores lately?  Because there was one acting funny around here.

[Witch]: Just because you can't sense the trails and echoes doesn't mean they're not there. A bunch of pests are coming out of the woodwork because of your tinker-ass whatever the fuckery. It smells like computers and burning solder and chemistry sets. I know how to tidy up after myself and I much prefer it that way.

The point is, I can't clean up what I myself can't yet see worth a damn.  So unless you've got a schema for this I can borrow, I would be disrupting my own projects for very uncertain chances of success since I can't even see what the fuck I'm doing.  Though I do agree that not attracting gribblies is in fact far better than having them come out of the woodwork, so I really hope you do have something.

...why the hell is it solder, I would have expected ozone...  Maybe the metaphorical lead, but then it's not like the lead is...  Ugh, anyway.  Look.  You pointed out the problem, you have therefore volunteered yourself to help fix it.  I don't have fuckin', Windsight or whatever, I was literally just now starting to get around to anything remotely sensory-proper and you just knocked me out of the flow state I was hoping would get me there.

[Witch]: ...Spirits preserve me from overpowered newbies. Goddamn it, you probably woke up when I started feeling this, just a couple days ago, didn't you?

Fine. I'll put up a basic-bitch grounding circle around your place if you'll let me touch the windows and lawn. My fee is the amount of mana that goes into it, which really won't be much at all to you.

Yeah, pretty much. 

...Although, if I just literally need proper grounding...

Better order myself one of those anti-static wristband thingies, I guess.  ...Damn it, circles are gonna make working with cubic solution spaces especially annoying until I've actually got something workable...

...I suppose I could literally make a lightning rod, at that.  Lemme just check the numbers...

...Well, I could.  Whether it'd work properly, hell if I know.  I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

She can, in fact, promote to copper without conjuring protons from nothing.  And if she wraps copper atoms around a core of quintessence...  Hopefully that'll be magiconductive!

(Copper probably would've been good enough on its own, really)

[Witch]: I have no idea what any of that meant, but if you want to take a stab at it yourself, have fun.

So far, I've been liberally stealing from computer games.  ...Hm.  Wonder if those echoes can be recycled for anything, come to think of it...

...Right.  So maybe if she gets...

Well, she read that certain folk magics are fond of glass bottles as containers and she has one sitting around.  So once there's enough magicopper wire to do a neat little wrap...

Hm, she should maybe also dupe the bottle, she was using it for practical things before this came up.

[Witch]: That's witchcraft 210 tbh

...Huh, now that I'm thinking about it, this is also Thaumcraft (Minecraft mod (ca. Research Table and post- anything that I actually saw vis nodes in)) 102.  Better bust open the wiki, see if there's anything that wants these Essentia...  Huh, and I did literally use a redstone-esque metaphor once, I wonder if that translated to research/essence generation...

...Oh gods dammit I could have been doing stuff with that this entire time too!

She could have actually built a thaumometer!

[Witch]: Look, I'm gonna duck out. If your thing doesn't work I might stop by in the dead of night and do it for you, pro-bono. I just want peace and quiet.

[Witch] has left the chat.

Well wasn't that just ominous.

She texts Wren.

Looks like you're not the only one who's out here for the peace and quiet; I just got a witch yelling at me for leaking over the aethernet.

...Self-appointed task complete, she buys a glass-bottled soda from one of the places on campus that sells one, because she normally recycles those but sees no reason to not reuse this instead of having to go find one with an actual screwtop again.

(Printing the wire is only a matter of diagramming and waiting for the solution to produce enough; then she wraps it around and into the bottle.  When she waves it around she can absolutely make it harvest essentia actively instead of passively capturing local overflow, and then it's gonna be stuck in there until she prises it out.)

OcularStone texts her:

According to this [link] I'm probably F-rank.

I dusted something without touching it, I melted butter faster than it should have, and I saw what card I was about to draw from a deck.

Huh.  Neat.  ...Annoying that it wasn't a useful proof of the magicalness of non-casters.  But that's cool that you're magic!

Yeah

Idk what even to feel now

Kinda feel like it will be all of the worry and few benefits?

Or that's just anxiety and overwhelm talking

...I'll send you good shit?  But you can always, like, build up a reserve or something.  Besides, you can dust things without touching them.

I'm being emo. I know.

I had already done all this processing about not being magic. 

Rah! Mundane humanity is just as strong! Science! Cooperation! Grr!

Except I am a mage. Just a shitty one.

Yeah.  ...Anyway, wanna help me, like, brainstorm shit?  I appear to have leapt sideways from Zachtronics games into mcfucking Thaumcraft because someone yelled at me for spilling what was obviously by analogy essentia all over the place, but now that I've got a bottle for that shit I'm not sure what to even do with it.

I might want an intro to your doctor for like

Anti-senescence therapy that I pay for with whatever tiny magic I can output over weeks and months

It would be an unbelievable relief even if I don't strictly need it yet

Kind of a wreck rn