the self-knower

[lifes_sake]

Vague and grandiose chat about motivated capitalism take up the rest of the wizards' evening. Plans are made for Cam to learn about worldgates the following (skipped from school with Renée's kind accomplicehood) day and, assuming he catches on quickly enough, to go to New York and meet Jenny and talk about her operating as their business proxy.

Presently it's bedtime, and Cam goes to his room and Matilda and Jellybean go to theirs and Cam has the chance to ask Grace what on earth she meant.

"Well," Grace says, whispering, "you've been holding off on labeling because you're only fourteen, but people stabilize at different ages, don't they? And as near as I can tell you've been stable for almost a year now. Not on either, but on whichever. I think you're just as likely to get a crush on Jellybean as Matilda and vice-versa, and I don't think it's because you're still undeclared, I think you're just wired that way."

Cam considers this. "Okay," he says. "I can live with that."

"I should hope so," says Grace, and Cam laughs, and he goes to sleep.

He's still on a sleep cycle appropriate to school, so he may be up before Jellybean and Matilda in the morning.

Comments

[lifes_sake]

"All right, we can keep doing that until you get bored and then we can go and I win a million dollars," says Cam. "I should probably submit an application thing first so they have time to process it, though. Should we take the bus back home or gate there, d'you think?"

[pythbox]

"Oh, gate there," says Matilda. "You can set it up, for the practice, and we'll all power it because it's more efficient that way."

[lifes_sake]

"All right." Cam peers into Grace's transcription of the explanation to make sure he has it down, and then he follows the steps methodically.

And there's Renée's kitchen.

[pythbox]

They all troop through; the gate closes behind them.

"Time to do science!" says Matilda. Jellybean laughs.

[lifes_sake]

"Science!" crows Cam, and he starts raiding the pantry and the medicine cabinet for raw materials to talk to. He hands Jellybean a potato and Matilda an ibuprofen tablet and himself a vitamin supplement to start with.

Science ensues!

[pythbox]

Potatoes, it turns out, are about on the level of grass and muffins as far as higher cognition goes.

Jellybean still manages to convince his to do a cute little dance.

[lifes_sake]

"Cute," says Cam, looking up from his vitamin and his wizard manual. "But dancing potatoes are not going to feed appreciably more starving people."

[pythbox]

"So?" says Jellybean. The potato pirouettes.

[lifes_sake]

Cam looks at him for a second, then says, "Okay," and relegates that particular potato to toy duty and gets himself another one to look at for when he's done with the vitamin.

[pythbox]

Jellybean continues playing with his dancing potato.

[lifes_sake]

Cam wishes to convince his vitamin to be better at being a vitamin. Ideally, it could supply perfect micronutrients for whoever took it with some sort of time-release so it wouldn't be necessary to have a new one every day for the vitamins that humans can't store effectively, but he'd settle for omitting side effects like niacin flush or some other measurable improvement in the performance. What does his manual have to say about that?

[pythbox]

His manual doesn't have anything specific to say about that. There are no preexisting spells to accomplish these aims.

Jellybean overhears the question and asks, "Niacin flush?"

[lifes_sake]

"If you take niacin, even the right amount of niacin, if it's more than you were getting before you get some side effects," says Cam, showing Jellybean the warning on the bottle.

[pythbox]

"Huh," says Jellybean. He captures his dancing potato and starts talking to it again.

[lifes_sake]

Cam starts asking his manual for general information about getting things to work in different ways in general.

[pythbox]

Well, that's... most of wizardry, really. The manual does its best to oblige.

Jellybean grabs a vitamin supplement.

[lifes_sake]

"You want to trade?" Cam asks Jellybean.

[pythbox]

"Nope," says Jellybean.

[lifes_sake]

"...Okay." Cam goes back to narrowing down what he's looking for from the manual without getting too narrow, with Grace's help.

[pythbox]

Jellybean talks to the potato and the vitamin. Matilda consults their manual and examines her pill.

[lifes_sake]

Science continues to ensue!

They don't make a lot of progress, and after a while Cam switches to a potato of his own. He already has a fair number of spells pulled on the subject of food and knows how to make the potato taste like chicken. Can he make it have other features of cleverer products? Can it taste like beef, can he fuss with the macronutrient content, will it consent to pass on characteristics like that to its sprouts?

[pythbox]

Some success is possible in that direction, although the potato is reluctant to taste like anything but potato and even more reluctant to take on any of these qualities in a genetic rather than superficial sense.

Meanwhile, Jellybean's potato is now a more vibrant shade of brown.

[lifes_sake]

Cam solicits information on outright genetic manipulation, in case someone's come up with a way to get around this reluctance. He's also listening with half an ear to what in the world Jellybean's doing with his potato.

[pythbox]

What Jellybean's doing with his potato is, apparently, genetic modification! That colour change is heritable.

[lifes_sake]

Cam blinks, and pays attention. He doesn't interrupt Jellybean; he does not yet know how to do that productively instead of distracting the other wizard into making the potato sing songs or write the Great American Novel or something instead.