Ayla #4: "Ayla and the Tests" By Diane Castle

I woke up when my alarm started playing Brass Monkey’s “Stab My Eyes with Synesthesia”. I’d stayed up late working through my list of options. But I felt energized at the very idea that I had options.

I knew that some of the options for Jade wouldn’t work for me. I’d already checked with Chou and Destiny’s Wave, for instance. But that still left a bunch of things I needed to try, starting with hypnosis.

I was definitely going to try the hypnosis first. There was no point in going for the painful, hideously risk-filled options if something less dangerous would work for me.

Okay, hypnosis wasn’t completely risk-free either. But I now knew I could trust Dr. Bellows. And we had learned from his work with Jade that we could trust him with hypnotherapy.

Okay, so I’d also had him checked out by Trin and Macintyre, Planetary Investigative Agents. He had a spotless record, really impressive credentials, and a history of top-notch recommendations. Plus, he was actually a lot younger than he looked. Man, sometimes Exemplar BITs are so incredibly bizarre.

Then it was off to the showers. Man, the farther from last Monday I got, the brighter things looked. I knew that was because I had been so frighteningly depressed about things. It really scared me to realize just how down I had been.

I walked into the bathroom just as Tennyo was stepping out of her shower. And she was using her towel to dry off her back, so her breasts and pubes were totally exposed, and she was jiggling. Holy crow!

She spotted me staring at her boobs. I expected her to yell at me. I totally didn’t expect her to be glad to see me ogling her.

“Ayla! Christ, I’m glad you’re doing better! Having you slinking around like you didn’t care about naked girls? That was just plain scary.”

Vox took off her bathrobe to step into the now-available shower, and turned back to look at me. She said, “Yeah, we’ve been pretty worried about you the last few days.”

I was going to say something back, but I couldn’t talk. Vox. Stark naked. Facing away from me so that perfect backside was on display. Turning to her left to look at me, so her full breasts jutted out like a pin-up in a Playboy. Those perfect curves on perfect display. I was going to remember that image for the rest of my life.

A giggle at my right got my attention. Bunny was grinning, “I guess you’re pretty much back to normal, huh?”

Sharisha finished drying off and added, “If you ask me, you’re always pretty miserable.. just like a boy.”

I found myself laughing. “Sharisha, maybe you haven’t noticed, but I am a boy. A boy with a really weird BIT, so I look like this and I have to pass myself off as a girl. Every time you call me a boy, it really cheers me up. Thanks.”

She glowered ferociously, since the last thing she wanted to do was make any of Team Kimba feel better. She grabbed her shower kit and stormed out.

Bunny said, “Well, everyone else was pretty worried about you.” She even gave me a big hug. Then she jumped back in shock.

“Sorry,” I murmured. Well, it had to be a rude shock to go give a girl a big hug and have a huge boner end up pressing against you. Between Tennyo and Vox, I had a hard-on that was about to make me keel over.

The whole room was good with that. Not that I stopped ogling, of course. After I washed off, I went light and dropped the water off me, then slipped my bathrobe back on. After that, I went to an available sink and did all my morning chores, which I managed to stretch out to nearly twelve minutes. That gave me enough time to: watch Vox dry off; see Nikki undress and get in her shower; catch Pilar shaving her legs while stark naked; and then get a perfect mirror reflection of Nikki magically drying her hair before toweling herself off. Man, after all that, I had a hard-on you could have used to drill for oil.

I went to my room, feeling much better already. Incredibly horny, but feeling much better.

As I dressed, Chou walked in, drying her hair. She was still drying her hair like a guy with short hair who didn’t give a shit what his hair looked like when he was done.

I had to get Vox or Jody or someone to show her how she ought to be drying her hair. She had gorgeous hair. Just stunning, straight, jet-black hair that ought to get treated better than that.

Chou smiled at me, “It is good to see you doing so much better. I was really worried about you.”

It occurred to me that a lot of people had been worried about me, and had been taking care of me. All of TK had been there for me, and so had a lot of girls on the floor. Maybe some of the guys, too. Risk and Flux hadn’t been their usual prankster-ish selves, either. I was going to have to figure out something really nice to do as a thank-you. I mean, something in addition to the huge thank-you the girls were going to get at the end of January when Hydroflux put in some hardware to brighten up their days.. not to mention their nights.

Chou pulled on her same old outfit of yoga pants and mandarin-collared top. Then she asked, “Would you like to walk to breakfast with me?”

I smiled, “I would, but I have a couple things I have to do first. You go on. Tell everyone I’ll catch up with them at breakfast.”

I turned on Brass Monkey, and played it loud enough to mask what I was going to do. Just in case. Destiny’s Wave was still in its holder on Chou’s desk. But, fortunately for me, the sword didn’t object when I played Brass Monkey. And it didn’t have eardrums, so it didn’t care how loud I played my music.

Destiny’s Wave was the only person in the whole dorm who didn’t object to Brass Monkey, and it wasn’t even a person. The one time that Chou had discussed music with Destiny’s Wave had been hysterical. Chou had been trying her best to explain why Brass Monkey was horrid. But Destiny’s Wave didn’t ‘get’ any music that wasn’t the music she had heard when she was alive, thousands of years ago. As far as the sword was concerned, almost all music was interesting, and yet no modern music was viscerally appealing. It just made Chou want to scream in frustration that her own sword was just as satisfied with my playing Brass Monkey as it was when Chou was playing her favorites.

Then I put on my headset to call Trin and Macintyre. I had a few more research jobs for them.

Once I was done with the phone call, I turned off the music and hurried to catch up with my teammates. I wasn’t too worried. It took Tennyo and Lancer so long to eat that I could have showed up half an hour later and they would have still been chowing down. Sometimes I thought that Tennyo and Lancer would have to keep me on their team when we were adults, just so the team could afford to have enough food on the table at mealtimes.

I figured my first approaches would be simple. The first ten items on my list were:

research from Trin and Macintyre
talk with Nikki about magical approaches
talk with Jade about all the things she looked into
talk with Mega-Girl about how her PK shell was changing her body
talk with Dr. Bellows about hypnosis to fix my BIT
talk with Dr. Tenant about medical and surgical options
talk with Zenith about any other resources
investigate available deviser drugs
check with Beltane about using ectoplasm to alter my form
if feeling desperate, talk to Sara too

I was going to wait until the reports came back from Trin and Macintyre before I moved on to anything major. But there was no reason I couldn’t get started on simple stuff.

I took my time going through the breakfast line. Chef Peter’s granola cereal was always worth getting, but I was hoping for something more.

Et voila! Chef André just happened to stroll out of the kitchen as I moved toward the baked goods. He smiled at me and set down a slice of a galette made of puff pastry. It looked like it had a layer of some sort of cream through the middle layer, and it smelled like either the puff pastry or the cream had almond in it. I could hardly wait.

I ate the granola first, so I didn’t ruin my appetite. Then I enjoyed the tart. The puff pastry was baked to perfection, and the rich cream in the middle was redolent with the flavors of almond and vanilla. Mmm.

Nikki gave me an elbow while I was enjoying my galette. She murmured, “Another special treat from your personal chefs?”

She smirked, “You pushers are all alike. Heroin, cocaine, pastries… Sure, you say the first taste is free, but then once I’m hooked, then things get pricey.”

I snickered. “Yeah, that’s me. I start you off on the light stuff. Puff pastry. Layer cakes. Then, when you’re hooked, I lure you onto the hard stuff. Caramels. Brownies. Hot fudge sundaes.”

She clapped her hands to the sides of her face and gave me the Macaulay Culkin “Home Alone” face.

It wasn’t until I laughed that Tennyo noticed we were up to something. “Whatcha talking about?” she asked from across about three pounds of bacon.

Billie shrugged, “Hardly ever any good desserts at breakfast. I wait ‘til lunch and dinner.”

I helpfully added, “And mid-morning snack, and mid-afternoon snack, and after-dinner snack, and…”

She rolled her eyes, but didn’t say anything. Mostly because she was stuffing a chunk of ribeye steak with gravy into her mouth. And when I say ‘chunk’, I mean something that only passes as ‘bite-sized’ if you’re feeding sharks and orcas at MarineWorld.

I made sure to be finished with breakfast before Nikki got up. We walked out of the caff, and she led me to a secluded area near the Quad. She asked, “What do you want?”

I started, “Remember when I thought my problem was GSD and I asked if you could help? Now we know my body problem is my BIT. So now I’m asking around about something a little different. Can you magically adjust my BIT?”

She frowned, “I’ve been looking into transfigurations of BITs, you know, because of Jade. It looks reasonable on paper. But they never seem to work properly when the mage actually performs the spell. Even when the transfiguration goes right, something else goes wrong. So this is an area of magic that’s supposed to be completely off-limits. No one’s supposed to be trying this stuff, because the results can be pretty awful.”

“Worse than Firesnake?” I had to ask. I mean, that sounded like it was as bad as it could get. Firesnake had probably had GSD so that he looked like he was half-snake. An attempt to cure him magically had turned him into - not a normal-looking mutant with fire manifestation powers - but a giant thirty-five foot spitting cobra demon-thing. That ate anything warm-blooded. Including maybe the mage who tried to help him.

She shrugged, “Maybe. I don’t know all the really awful stuff that’s happened.”

I tried once more, “Well, would you set up another quick chat between me and Circe? The last one went pretty well, even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.”

She nodded, “Okay. Circe thought you were pretty decent, for a non-mage. I think it really helped that you took her advice, even though it was exactly what you didn’t want to hear. Hardly anyone does that. So I think I can set something up.”

I put my hand on her shoulder, “Thanks, Nikki. Thanks a ton. I really appreciate this.”

She gave me a worried smile. “Just remember, Ayla. This is a banned area of magic. It’s a really dangerous area of magic. Don’t expect she’s going to jump up and down with excitement at the chance to turn you back into a boy.”

I frowned, “Yeah. I know. It’s probably going to be the same as when I asked about GSD. But I have to try!”

She nodded, “I know. Back when I first realized what was happening to my body, I think I would’ve tried anything to go back to normal. Just don’t try anything. There are a lot of really bad things that have happened because someone was so desperate that they were willing to try absolutely anything, no matter how dangerous or evil or insane.”

“Yeah. So has Billie. And Sara. And probably Dr. Bellows and a dozen other people. She’s pretty desperate. You probably understand her better than any of us. Me and Billie? We have someone inside us who’s helping us adjust and making us feel okay about changing. Hank’s fine with his change. Toni? Hell, she’s ecstatic about it. The changelings upstairs? Megs and Delta Spike and Electrode and Belle? They’re all happy to be girls. You and Jade and Chou are the ones who’re stuck, and really upset about it. Just don’t do something insane, like what Elaine did.”

I wasn’t that desperate. I hoped. Elaine had done the dumbest thing possible. She had tried changing from boy to girl by getting a mad scientist to grab her and slap her into his transformation chamber. She was just damned lucky she was alive. And female instead of something horrifically weird. And not a bimbo mindslave to Dr. Pygmalion. Even worse, Elaine had apparently learned from that experience that she could try absolutely anything without thinking through all the consequences.

Then I had to rush off to Costume Shop. I couldn’t cut that class any more. Hopefully, there was something interesting going on now, instead of having to endure morons like Superior continually demonstrating that they had no style, and they couldn’t grasp simple fundamentals like color theory. Clearly, being an Exemplar didn’t make you smarter, even if it hyped your reading speed and memorization ability. Well, Tansy Walcutt was clear evidence of that. Along with that idiot Bubble in my World Lit class.

I walked into Costume class and sat next to Jinn. It was a ‘red flag’ day. Jinn was wearing her skin pours, so she looked like a cute Japanese girl who was way too normal to go to Whateley. Except for the fact that she kept forgetting to turn her head and look at where everyone else was looking.

Mrs. Ryan was dressed in yet another floor-length granny dress and color-coordinated shawl. She looked around the room and spotted me. “Phase? Could you please see me at the end of our class? Thank you.”

Then she spent most of the class period talking about ‘color psychology’. What colors mean to people, and how that affects the way you use the colors of your costume to achieve psychological effects.

“Now who can give an example of a superhero, either real or fictional, whose costume is designed with color psychology in mind? We’ve already discussed heroes whose colors are built around flag motifs, so we needn’t bring them up today.”

One of the Goth kids raised his hand and supplied, “Well, there’s Batman…”

Mrs. Ryan smiled, “Yes. Perhaps the classic example. Black and grays exemplify night, darkness, and threat.”

Some else ventured, “Power Girl? I mean, the other Supergirl? The one with the really big.. umm…”

Mrs. Ryan cut him off before he really put his foot in it. “Which one, dear?”

“I, umm, well, I was thinking of the white costume with the.. umm.. big hole in the front…”

But the kid kept on trying. “Well, that, but the more I think about it, her old costume which was all silver and gold. ‘Cause silver and gold mean value, and importance, and richness, and all that stuff.”

Mrs. Ryan said, “Very good. That’s exactly the sort of example I want us to think about. Power Girl’s white uniform exemplifies purity and truth, among other concepts.”

The interesting color was red. Mrs. Ryan had costume examples where the red color in a uniform obviously meant danger, examples where it clearly meant a demonic threat, examples where it meant drama or excitement, and examples where it obviously meant emotions like love. So the design of the uniform and the color interacted in interesting ways.

Someone in the back row couldn’t keep his mouth shut, of course. “That’s why my costume is all red. ‘Cause I’m a looooooove machine!”

Mrs. Ryan pursed her lips and said, “Mr. Uberman. Please see me after class for your detention.”

When class ended, I moved down front to speak to Mrs. Ryan before that dork Superior could get in. I cheated, too. I went light, in case anyone tried to block my way. No one did. Maybe I was getting a rep too.

Mrs. Ryan was writing on a notepad when I walked up. She looked up and softly said, “Are you doing better now, Phase?”

I smiled, “Thank you for asking. I am. I had a really bad week last week, or I wouldn’t have missed class.”

She said, “We all know what it means when a counselor like Dr. Bellows writes a student note, rather than one of the physicians. And Miss Sinclair has been bringing in your homework. I’m very pleased with your work. Your last designs - the ones you did using the computer figures - look good. This week, we’ll work with your colors a bit. I think that you can improve your design.”

Superior strolled up at that point. Mrs. Ryan ripped the top paper off the notepad and held it out to him without even looking at his face. He took the paper, stared at it in horror, and blanched. But he didn’t say anything. He just turned and left. Quickly.

Man, that must have been some detention notice. Maybe I was underestimating Mrs. Ryan.

Mrs. Ryan went on in that same sweet tone, as if nothing had happened. “Now then. As I was saying, once we tweak your color scheme a bit, I also think there’s room for improvement in the way you blocked your colors out on your figure. So in the following weeks, I think we’ll look at some options there too. All right?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I just agreed with her. Then I rushed to my next class so I wouldn’t be late.

I got to Spanish class about a minute before the bell. I slipped into a seat behind Toni and Rip. Toni was busy bouncing in her seat and describing something wild to Rip. So it was exactly like every day.

“…so I just centered myself, and when he tried to hit me with that honkin’ metal fist, I flowed right through his attack. But he had this big ol’ battery pack mounted on his hip, so I hit it hard enough to break it, and his entire power armor seized up. I left him there, frozen like a statue, trying to yell for help behind his stupid armor helmet. If no one’s helped him by this afternoon, then I’ll…”

A strong voice spoke in Spanish, “Please pay attention, class. It is time to start. Does everyone have their homework?”

I was way ahead on homework, and way ahead on vocabulary, so I did just fine in class. After class, I had to go down front to talk with Señor Ramirez. And he even wanted to have THAT discussion in Spanish.

“Phase, I am pleased that you are back in class again. Are you feeling better?”

“Good. Chaka has been bringing in your homework, and I have been very pleased with your progress. Your in-class participation today was very good. I hope that you do not have further problems.”

And then it was off to A Year Of Sensory Deprivation, more commonly known as one extremely boring period of Powers Theory.

Möbius grinned, “Guess what? A couple guys from the Cape Squad are interested in utility belts too! This is great!”

Charmer went right into French: “Ayla, I am very glad to see that you are looking better. We have been very concerned. You seemed to be so depressed last week, and you missed all the Theory of Powers classes and also the practicals.”

I chatted with them for most of the class, since Dr. Quintain was boring the class into a coma with his lecture on extra-dimensional and inter-dimensional density changers. That, and I was a week ahead on my Costume Shop homework, and two weeks ahead on my Spanish homework, so I didn’t have any work to do. At least Filbert didn’t ask me to come down for one of his little demonstrations.

Lunch was a bright little star in the day, since Chef André had a dessert treat for me. He called it his ‘American-style caramel-walnut upside-down banana cake’. I could see from the way the toasted walnuts were baked into the caramel sauce that it probably had been baked upside down. And it smelled fantastic. It was redolent with the scents of banana and caramel and vanilla and - I was pretty sure - some rum. Or at least some good-quality rum flavoring. I rushed through my tortilla wrap and salad to get to it. And it was worth the hurry. The banana cake was remarkably moist, rich with vanilla and what I was guessing was a good dark rum, plus what was probably sour cream to give it just the right tang.

I made sure I had time to talk with André before I had to rush off to aikido class. Marcel strolled out to join in the chat. I told André in French, “That was really superb. Was that dark rum and sour cream in the cake with the banana and vanilla extract?”

He grinned, “But yes. I knew that using our best dark rum and vanilla was going to be worth it with a gourmet like you sampling the cake.”

I smiled, “Flattery will get you nowhere. Other than the first-class round-trip Air France tickets for you and your wife and son to visit your parents over Christmas.”

Marcel had already told me about André and Peter’s Christmas plans. Well, I had asked.

André looked at Marcel, then at me, and then he was actually too choked up to speak. That’s really saying something for a Frenchman. He nodded and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Marcel explained, “He really did not feel that he would be able to afford to take Genevieve and Paul - his wife and son - this year. You did a very nice thing for him.”

I walked off to class, still wondering about that. Didn’t anyone else see how great these chefs were? Didn’t anyone else think that they deserved something that told them they were appreciated? Did middle-class people just treat their chefs like short-order cooks?

Aikido class was pretty much normal, since I hadn’t missed a class. Not that Ito and Tolman were ever going to say ‘good work’ or anything to me. But Powers Lab was more of the ‘you have been gone for a week’ stuff. Mrs. Bohn’s assistant Dr. Yablonski took me aside once I had done my weightlifting measurements.

Dr. Yablonski was one of those teachers who really looked like he was a retired superhero. He looked like an Exemplar, right down to the Captain America build and the Batman jawline. His right arm and most of his right leg were cybernetic constructs, like he had been forced to retire from superheroing due to really hideous injuries. But that was all speculation on my part. I was guessing that he wasn’t a deviser or gadgeteer, or he’d be down helping out in the Workshop. His teaching style was more the Batman-esque ‘stern dark teacher of justice’ style than Mrs. Bohn’s friendly style.

He frowned, “Phase, you missed some important labs. If you’re going to be a Warper, you need to understand how the ability works in more than your own area. We had both Stonebear and Holdout in here for one day during last week, one on Tuesday and the other Thursday, demonstrating their abilities. You’ll need to make up those labs…”

He went off on a detailed discussion on how ‘size’ Warpers don’t really change their size (or the size of other objects) as much as they alter their relationship with the rest of the deci-dimensional universe around them. I had read the textbook - along with two library books by Dr. Quintain that went into more detail - but interactions with Dr. Yablonski always went better if you gave him the chance to be Mister Exposition first.

An internal size warper like Stonebear could do both the ‘shrink’ and ‘grow’ effects. (Lots of internal size-warpers could only do one of the two, and Stonebear was a rarity in that he had another warper ability too.) But Stonebear’s ‘giant’ form wasn’t really a six-ton giant with a volume that would generate more heat than he could expend over his surface area, thus causing him to overheat and die; he just looked that way. And he seemed that way in a lot of real-world situations. If he hit someone, it would feel a lot like a six-ton giant had punched them. But what actually hit the person was a warp displacement field. That also meant that a giant might be able to take more kinetic force than you would expect, because the kinetic force would be impinging on the displacement field, and not directly on the giant himself. On the other hand, the larger the giant could go, the more the displacement field separated him from the ‘real world’. An eighty-foot size-warper giant would have a displacement field so intense that he couldn’t really hit you effectively, even if you had all the muscle of Jade. To be effective, he’d have to hit some other object and knock it at you.

An external size warper like Holdout could shrink other objects. From what Tennyo had told me about the lab last week, he was called Holdout because he could carry dozens of major holdouts around with him, and keep them shrunk down for hours and hours. Man, I bet he’d be a bitch and a half to fight, what with all the things he might be yanking out and restoring and then shooting at you. He could take a two-hundred-pound tripod-mounted Gizmatic Lightning Launcher™ and ‘shrink’ it down to something he could hide in a large pocket. But the object was still the same mass and volume it had been before. It just appeared to be about the size and weight of a ten-inch cast-steel replica, because the real object was displaced inter-dimensionally.

Tennyo had brought copies of the lab assignments home for me last week, and I had done them, using resources off the Whateley intranet. So I handed them in as soon as Dr. Yablonski stopped lecturing. He sternly looked them over, as if I were dumb enough to copy someone else’s labwork in a school where Exemplar teachers had near-perfect recall and could spot plagiarism in a millisecond.

He couldn’t find anything to complain about on the lab assignments, so he said, “And you were also supposed to find a real-world application of one of those warping abilities.”

I showed him my utility belt with the apparently-useless pockets. Then I reached into one and pulled out a throwing knife. I went heavy with it, and handed it to him.

“Hmm,” he stalled. He held the knife as if it were twenty-five ounces when I handed it to him, instead of twenty-five pounds. Definitely an Exemplar. After about a second, the knife reverted to normal weight. I could tell by his reaction. He said, “So this is the ‘portable throwing axe’ you were writing about in your density-changers assignment. This is good. I didn’t give you enough credit on that.”

That was Dr. Yablonski. Tough but fair. The stern teacher of justice. If he dressed up as Batman at Halloween, I wouldn’t be surprised a bit. I had a naughty temptation to ask him to say the line “my parents are DEAD”.

But he wasn’t done being stern. “I did have an extra-credit assignment for you, but you weren’t present. Dr. Quintain thinks your extra-dimensional phasing ought to let you interfere with inter-dimensional warper abilities, and maybe even subsume the displacement field. I wanted to see what you could do with Stonebear’s displacement field.”

I winced, “I don’t know about that. After Fireball, I’m trying not to affect other people. What if I did something really awful to his displacement field and it hurt him?”

He frowned, “Dr. Quintain doesn’t think there’s any risk of you damaging a person by interacting with his displacement field. The worst that should happen is the displacement field would collapse, causing the person to revert to normal size.”

I frowned back. “Dr. Quintain didn’t think there was any risk of my shredding an Exemplar’s BIT and turning them into a hideous, insane monster either. Until it happened.”

He frowned harder. “It’s only an extra-credit assignment. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

You can’t win against The Stern Teacher Of Justice, any more than you can win against The Bat. Besides, Politics 101 tells you that in a sitch like this one, you should always let the boss think he’s won. I just said “I understand, sir” and got on with my labwork.

After that was trig. I made sure to turn in all my homework before class started.

Mrs. Bell gave me a smile and said, “I’m glad to see you’re back, and you’re obviously keeping up with your homework.” She hefted the stack of papers and said, “Or maybe getting well ahead of the lecture with your homework… So often, when students are out for a long time like this, they fall far behind, and then things get.. difficult.”

Then I went and sat with Electrode and Unicorn. Unicorn grinned, “Electrode was filling me in on what I missed yesterday. I guess I left too early.”

I said, “Yeah, we could’ve used your help. Things got sort of nasty there for a bit.”

Electrode sat there with an ugly expression on her face while she waited for us to finish talking about Delta Spike. One of these days, I was going to have to get the lowdown on that one.

After class, Unicorn made an effort to walk down the hall next to me. I made a guess about that.

When we weren’t surrounded by people fleeing last-period math, she murmured, “There’s another meeting of the Golden Kids. Same time, this Saturday night. Can you make it?”

Electrode walked up and asked, “What’s that about? You going to the Golden Kids shindigs these days?”

I nodded, “Sure. They’re just like the kids I used to know. In a couple cases, they ARE the kids I used to know. I mean, I actually went to prep school with Glitch. And my family company’s done business with the families of a lot of them.”

She wondered, “What about Tansy Walcutt? Isn’t she one of the Golden Kids? I thought you two hated each other.”

I had to grin at the image that popped into my head. “Yeah, if Solange was still in the Golden Kids, I think the first meeting of the year would’ve ended with the two of us having a fight to the death. Preferably hers. Although I’m pretty sure Dynamaxx would’ve been standing over us, cheering us on as long as it looked like a catfight. But she ditched the Golds last year when she ran for higher ground. They like to think they blackballed her, but she dumped them for the Alphas. And she deserves the Alphas, just like they deserve her.”

Electrode headed back to Poe, while I went over to the clinic. I’d called over in the morning and arranged a quick afternoon meeting with Dr. Raul Tenant. As I walked over, I called on my cell phone and checked to see if he was going to be delayed. At a place like Whateley, a big emergency was always probable.

I was in luck, for a change. Dr. Tenant was able to see me only a couple minutes after the time I had scheduled. That was good, because I had an appointment with Dr. Bellows in less than half an hour.

I was shown into a small, well-lit room that was Dr. Tenant’s office. He was studying a computer screen that I assumed was displaying my medical records.

He waved me in and pointed me to a chair on the opposite side of his desk. “Phase. Please, come in and have a seat. I’m just looking over all your test results and medical records. You do have a lot of them.”

He nodded. “I read over your meeting request. It was quite clearly worded, which is a pleasant change I might add. You want to know if medicine has any solutions for you. You don’t have GSD, but you do have a BIT that’s causing you to take on a form not to your liking. I wish I could say that was a rare thing, but a great many of our Exemplars have BITs which are causing them trouble.”

He sighed, “I don’t think so. I see that you’ve healed completely from some serious injuries, including those slashes on your upper arm. Not even a scar. So you have enough Regen in you to cause problems. It’s pretty clear from your injury recoveries this fall that you’ll have reversion syndromes if we try any sort of plastic surgery.”

He looked grim. “Please don’t do anything like that. Your body would heal faster than a baseline’s would, but not by a great amount. And then your breasts would almost certainly grow back. Since you’re still young, and possibly still changing toward your BIT ideal, your breasts might grow back even larger than they are now.”

He finished, “So hormones won’t help you. Surgery is contraindicated. I wouldn’t recommend any deviser drugs, either. That’s not really my field of expertise, but you could research that area if you wanted.”

He said, “You might look into hypnosis. But if you don’t have any success with that, then the standard medical options are pretty well exhausted. There are non-Western medical approaches like acupuncture and acupressure, as well as herbalism. My magical adviser has told me that mages won’t want to touch this kind of problem, so I don’t really have any news that you want to hear.”

Well, at least he was honest. I knew from talking with Chou and Destiny’s Wave that the ‘non-Western approaches’ he mentioned weren’t going to pan out for me, either. Fortunately, I’d started with a long list of possibilities.

I stood up and put out my hand. As we shook, I said, “Thank you for being honest. That’s what I really wanted.”

He gave me a little smile. “That’s not what patients really want. That’s just what patients have to settle for.”

So I was in a less-than-marvelous mood when I got to Dr. Bellows’ office. Valerie showed me in. As usual, he was right on time. I had a feeling he was using his mutant abilities to figure out who was going to need extra time in their sessions, because he never seemed to be running late, even late in the day.

He welcomed me in, and led me over to his armchairs so we could just sit and talk.

After we had talked about how I was feeling, and how my first day back in class had gone, I brought up the subject of hypnosis.

He thought for a second. “That’s right, Jade Sinclair is on your team, isn’t she?”

He smiled knowingly. “I understand that Jade doesn’t want everyone to understand how to counter what she does, but I’ve seen her instantiate Jinn into objects.”

He replied, “I don’t think that falls under doctor-patient privilege, but I don’t see any reason why I would need to discuss that with anyone. Still, her actual powers are on the computer records.”

I nodded, but I didn’t see any reason that I couldn’t get those computer records changed at some convenient time in the future. All I needed was a contact with sufficient access. I could work on that.

We talked some more about the hypnosis trials we would try on Friday. He stressed, “This is not going to be a magic bullet, you understand.”

I told him, “Right. After all, not even salvarsan, the original ‘magic bullet’, was a magic bullet.”

He blinked a couple times and then said, “Oh! It took me a moment to place your reference. I wouldn’t have thought a fourteen-year-old would know about salvarsan.”

I shrugged, “I read a lot. Back in elementary school, I read a number of books on the history of medicine, and doctors in general.” I admitted, “Back then, I really wanted to become a doctor. But I knew that wasn’t practical, since I was obligated to prepare myself to go into the family business.”

“Hmm,” he temporized. “Did you ever feel that this was unfair? That you should have been allowed to become a doctor?”

“Oh no.” I explained, “We’re Goodkinds. We have responsibilities. People depend on us. And not just the people in our family. Millions of people all over the globe depend on us. Father wanted to be a baseball player when he grew up. Uncle Herb wanted to be a musician. But they both knew that they had important things to do. They couldn’t just ‘run off to join the circus’, so to speak. They had a lot to learn. They had to be prepared to take over the family businesses from Grandfather. Of course, I could have ignored that obligation and focused on becoming a doctor. My sister Heather essentially did that. She ignored her responsibilities and became a model. Now she thinks she’ll be the next Angelina Jolie. Since she has the brains of an ice cube, she’ll probably end up being the next Gia Carangi. Still, it would have been good if she’d accepted her role in the family empire.”

He wrinkled his brow in thought. “So how hard has it been for you, knowing that all that training is going for nothing, since you can’t go back into the family businesses?”

“I try not to think about that too much,” I admitted. “Knowing I can’t be the person I spent my life training to be… In a lot of ways, it hurts just as much as knowing that my family despises me because I’m a mutant. Or being trapped in a body I really hate. But I guess it could be a lot worse. There are plenty of people here at Whateley who have it worse than I do. And I’m doing my part to help all the people around here who obviously need decent financial advice.”

“Obviously,” I insisted. “It’s painfully clear that Whateley spends a lot of time educating their gadgeteers and devisers in the Workshop aspects, and completely fails to educate them on the important aspects of life: the financial and legal side of life once they build their creation. It’s no wonder so many devisers go crazy or evil, when they’re probably getting ripped off by every corporation with which they deal. All these madboys trying to steal millions with their devises could make a lot more money if they just worked with decent financial advisors!”

Eventually, Dr. Bellows got us back on track, and explained what he would be doing in the hypnosis sessions. “I won’t be putting you in a trance and commanding your BIT to magically fix itself. This doesn’t work like that.”

“Good. What we’ll be trying to do is to train you in hypnosis, so that you can work on a self-hypnosis regimen. Then I’ll guide you, while you do the real work. Studies have shown that when the patient performs self-hypnosis, the patient is far more likely to get useful results out of it. I personally think there are lots of reasons why, but I’ll give you two: you’ll always trust yourself more than someone else; and if you’re doing it yourself, you can reinforce the hypnotic commands a lot more regularly.”

He nodded, “Good. But here’s the most important part. Hypnosis is not a magic panacea. It may not work at all. It may not work to any noticeable extent. And even if it does work, it may take months or years to get any improvements. You shouldn’t expect that this is going to fix your life in a week. In fact, you should be telling yourself not to expect much at all. It’s important not to get your hopes up too high on something like this. Okay?”

“Okay.” I understood completely. What he really meant was that HE didn’t think this would work for me.

We wrapped up, and I left his office. I could have gone back to Poe and joined the usual study group, but I was feeling fairly discouraged. And I didn’t have a lot of studying to do. I was done with Civics and Accounting I. I was well ahead on homework in all my other classes, and I was nearly done with my paper for World Lit.

I decided to go do something constructive that would make me feel better. I headed over to Hawthorne.

Mrs. Cantrel met me at the front door. “Goodchild, you don’t have detention today. Yesterday was your last day.”

I smiled, “I remember. I just thought I’d drop by and see if Claire wanted some math help, and maybe Melissa wanted to chat a bit.”

She just shook her head and smiled. This wasn’t her usual ‘shark looking at helpless swimmers’ smile. This was sort of a surprised smile. “You Kimbas just keep surprising me.”

“You’re the fifth Kimba to drop by today. Fey came by, then Tennyo, then Chaka, then Lancer, and now you.”

She slowly shook her head. “Lord, no. Most people see this as the worst punishment detail on campus. I’ve had people volunteer to work in the sewers, or shovel sidewalks in the middle of winter, instead of having to work at Freak House.”

She smiled broadly, “No, it’s not.” She stared off into space for a few seconds, and then said, “Louis thinks you ought to start with Claire. She can really use the help in trig. And my old math skills aren’t good enough to be tutoring her. I’ll come get you after a while, once we’ve got Puppet’s room cleaned up, and you can go see her.”

“I could help with the clean-up,” I volunteered. Not that I really wanted to, but if it was something that needed doing…

She slowly shook her head no. “I don’t think so. Not today. One of her major tubes ruptured, and there’s toxic blood everywhere. We’ve got a full MOPP 4 team in there now. It was pretty handy having that Sara girl around last week for things like this, since she’s not affected by it. You don’t know how much I worry about exposing most of you kids to Puppet’s blood.”

She turned her head, “Dean? Dean! Could you please take Ayla up to see Claire?”

Slab got up from one of the oversized couches in front of the television and lumbered over. “Yes ma’am?”

He gave her a nod, and then walked off without looking to see if I was following.

I walked along behind him. Of course, since he was way bigger, he had a much longer stride, and I had to walk quickly to keep up. I asked, “Dean, what…”

“Okay.” So much for Mister Sociable. Well, lots of people around campus went by their codenames instead of their real names, so it didn’t really mean much. And he didn’t have much reason to trust a Goodkind. “You can call me Ayla if you want, or Phase. Whichever… But what are you supposed to be keeping an eye on?”

He finally decided to answer, while we were going up the stairs. “Spoof. He’s taking a nap now, and sometimes, when he’s asleep…”

He frowned, “She had it easy. Some copies of her? Big deal. You should see it when he has a nightmare. After the last couple, no one in this whole building’s ever gonna let him watch a horror movie again.”

I didn’t bother to correct Mister Sensitivity about Nikki’s feelings, and ‘how easy’ she had it when Spoof’s copies of her were running around naked. I suspected she would have rather faced one of those nightmares.

Claire was really surprised to see me. “Phase! What’re you doing here? I mean… Don’t tell me you got detention again…”

I scowled, “No! Of course not! I just thought I’d come by and see how you were doing, and give you some more math tutoring.” Damnit, why does everyone figure I’m the Wicked Witch of the West? I bet not one single person said that to Tennyo or Lancer.

I watched as Claire’s face went through shock, then disbelief, then amazement, then realization…

I went heavy just in the nick of time, as she suddenly threw herself into my arms and burst into tears. Static electricity crackled all around us, and her tears shimmered with their electrical charges. She sobbed, “You came back… Everyone said you wouldn’t… You stopped coming the last time… I didn’t know what to think… I wanted you to… But no one comes back… Everyone thinks we’re freaks… And you’re rich… You didn’t have to… You’re a Goodkind and everything… And you stopped coming after the last time… But you came back…”

“Girls.” Slab shook his ponderous head. He didn’t get what was going on, and he was obviously smart enough to know that he was never going to understand women. He just scooted us into Claire’s room so her burgeoning static charge didn’t wreck the hallway.

Then I just held Claire while she babbled and cried. Her tears had such a massive charge that every drop which fell on me was like getting a big electrical shock. Even though I had already gone heavy. I didn’t want to think about what her static charge would do to a baseline, or someone like Jade.

Once I got Claire calmed down, she sat on her bed and wiped her tears away while I took care of the static build-up on everything in the room. She wanted to chat, instead of working on math, but that was okay by me.

Apparently, a third of Hawthorne was talking about visits from Team Kimba. Chaka was regularly coming by to chat and give Tai Chi lessons to a couple kids - like you’d be able to keep Chaka from chatting away. Tennyo had some regular deal going with half a dozen Thornies, including some girl named Fire Forge. Jade was dropping by to see Frank and Jello and a couple others. Nikki was coming by regularly, and every guy in Hawthorne was eagerly awaiting her next visit. Lancer was dropping by on some weird schedule so he could avoid Olympia. Even Carmilla and Bladedancer were doing it, and they hadn’t had as much contact with these kids as the rest of us had.

I explained, “Sorry about the last time, but the headmistress told me not to come over here anymore until Tisiphone was moved out again. You met her?”

Claire nodded. “She was nuts! She said she used to be beautiful, and you turned her into a monster. But you’re not a wizard or anything. And she said she was gonna rip you apart and stuff…”

I admitted, “She was telling the truth. The Alphas put hits out on half of Team Kimba, a couple weeks ago.”

“No, I wish I were,” I sighed. “Fireball set up a little ambush for me. She was going to burn me and permanently scar me. Or worse. We’ll probably never know for sure. But… Well, you know I can go heavy or go light?”

“I can go not-quite-light. I have this level I call disruption-light. If I go that density and I pass through electronics, they fry. Or I pass through people, and it knocks them out. That’s what I did to her. But we found out - way too late if you ask me - that if I disruption-phase through an Exemplar’s BIT, I can trash it too. I ruined her BIT. I turned her into that.. thing.”

“But it was an accident! You didn’t know you could do that! And she was trying to kill you or something!”

I groaned, “But I still feel bad about it. And there’s no way I can ever make it up to her.”

She gave me a big hug, and then grinned. “You know, when you’re heavy like this, hugging you is like hugging a steel statue.”

“Hey, don’t be sorry. If you couldn’t go heavy like that, you couldn’t come visit me!”

We kept chatting about Team Kimba and the people in Hawthorne, and we never did get to the math tutoring. Before we stopped talking, there was a knock at the door. A red light flashed above the door.

Claire winced, “Okay, the red light means whoever it is probably can’t handle my static field. You need to slide the mesh screen over the doorway and check that it’s grounded, before you let ‘em open the door.”

I got the high-conductance mesh over the doorway. It clicked into place when it was positioned properly, which seemed like a good design. I unlocked the door, and it opened to reveal a hopeful-looking Frostbite.

She grinned, “You ARE here! Oly was complaining because she never can find Lancer – oh, I wonder why – and she said ‘even that Goodkind – well she called you a bad name – is here’ and so I checked with Mrs. Cantrel, and you are here!” She stopped and waved to Static Girl, “Hey Claire! Isn’t this great? People are all afraid to come over and visit, so the only time I ever get to get out and see people is when it’s hot and bone dry outside, and even then stuff can go wrong…” She sagged in sudden discouragement.

Claire said, “Hey, come on, it wasn’t your fault that hydrant wasn’t turned off all the way.”

Frostbite frowned, “Yeah, but when I turned that water to ice, it burst the pipes, and then everything went to hell, and…”

Frostbite said, “Doesn’t matter. I still did it. I am gonna be so glad when I get outta here. I think I’m gonna move to the Mojave Desert. No water, no cold, no water pipes, it’ll be great.”

I left with Frosty and we chatted as she led me over to Puppet’s room. She stopped me as I was putting on overboots. “You are gonna come back again, aren’t you?”

She shrugged, “Well, people don’t like coming here. It gets pretty lonely.”

I gave her a hug and said, “Well, I like coming here. Especially now that I’m not getting hit in the face with a five-gallon ball of snot.”

I grabbed a gasmask and went in to see Puppet. “Melissa? Got time for visitors?”

She looked up from her notes on her desk and smiled, “Ayla! Sure! Come on in.”

“Okay,” she said. “But I’m studying for a European History test. Would you help me out?”

So I spent most of my time going through their textbook and asking questions, like “How long was the Hundred Years War?” We were still doing question-and-answer when Mrs. Cantrel came by to tell me I needed to go eat dinner.

At dinner with all of TK, we were having one of our usual wacko conversations. Sometimes I wondered if anyone were eavesdropping on us. But I knew the typical conversations we had would either drive a snooper insane or scare the crap out of him.

This time, the talk was about Sara. She was up and around, but now her room needed some care. Apparently, she had a spare head that her dad had incinerated, along with the rest of her room, before he fixed things for her.

I think it said something about the way life was going for Team Kimba that the half-demon chick had been decapitated, her head had grown back but the severed head hadn’t died, Sara had engaged in a life-or-death battle with The Kellith, a Great-Old-One demon had been in the basement of Poe setting fire to stuff, and what everyone was worried about was the lumpy things in the meatloaf.

Okay, I wasn’t worried about the meatloaf. I was having some cassoulet with a rich confit d’oie, courtesy of Chef André. Tennyo wasn’t worried either. She ate about eight helpings of the meatloaf before she moved on to the next main course, pretty much like locusts clearing off an entire farm before moving on to the next fields.

Chaka interrupted, “Okay, but what I wanna know, is who went to Hawthorne today?”

Everybody who had gotten detention, except Sara and Jade, had their hand up. Well, Sara had been having a lot of trouble with everyone from Admin on down, and Jade was fresh off her job helping those guys in the sewer. Although I’m not sure you can use the words ‘fresh’ and ‘sewer’ in the same sentence. Especially given the sewers around here.

Jade pouted, “I have a job, you know! We were going to sneak over there after dinner, while I was studying in my room.”

Nikki pointed out, “Well, now you don’t have to sneak. It looks like we’re all going over there.”

Toni shrugged, “What’s the problem? I had a great time over there. I like going back.”

I tried to explain, “We’re apparently the only people who ever got detention there who wanted to come back. You know the Alphas wouldn’t go back. You know the campus bullies don’t want to go back. And you know badguys who get caught doing stuff around here aren’t going to want to go back. Who else besides us ever gets detention at Hawthorne?”

Hank said, “When Lily’s friends and I got in trouble for busting into a restricted area to stop the Masterminds, we got extra Security duty.”

Jade said, “Stan and Morrie said that Bronco and Silo bust stuff all the time, but they just keep getting assigned to Maintenance to fix the stuff up again. Stan said they’re getting really good at working construction.” She broke into a grin. “Morrie said it’s a good thing, because they’re not smart enough to become plumbers.”

Bunny chipped in, “Lots of times, when guys in the Workshop get detention for breaking the rules, they get assigned to outdoors stuff they really hate, like raking leaves, shoveling snow, cleaning the Quad… That kind of thing.”

Sara supplied, “Last year, when the Intelligence Cadet Corps broke into Schuster to stop that gang of Masterminds, they were assigned to the third shift of Security for two solid weeks. That must be brutal if you still need to sleep.”

Chaka summarized, “Okay, so we’re the only people to do anything bad enough to get detention in Hawthorne, and not be the bad guys, and also be tough enough not to get trashed by the Thornies.”

Nikki added, “And there are a lot of nice people over there, and they need our help.”

I pointed out, “I believe that’s the point. People like you never get detention at Hawthorne under normal circumstances. The good samaritans are off helping others, not getting in massive superhero battles that endanger half the campus.”

After dinner was over, I made a tactical error. I asked Nikki, “Hey, remember when you loaned all those books on hypnosis to Jade? Well, we’re going to try hypnosis to correct my BIT. I’d like to borrow them all. Is that okay?”

The tactical error was that I asked her while we were all walking back to Poe, and the rest of TK jumped on me.

Chaka got in there first, of course. “Ayles, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Hank added, “Weren’t you one of the people on Jade’s case about this the last time?”

Tennyo growled, “At least Jade had some protection when she went in and tried this. He could have done anything to her while she was under hypnosis!”

Jade chipped in, “Yeah!” Then she turned to Tennyo and frowned, “Hey! I’m not completely helpless here!”

I put my hands up in surrender. “Look, we’ve been through this once already. But now we know Bellows is trustworthy…”

Jade grumbled, “There was that thing about coughing whenever he tapped his pencil. I didn’t like that.”

“…and I have a plan,” I continued, ignoring her complaint. “I’m going to have Jade cast Jinn into my clothes just before the meet, and then if anything goes sideways, Jinn can just fly me out of there.”

Jade grinned, “We can do better than that! I’ll cast Jinn into your clothes and your skin!”

“Oh no,” she shook her head. “Nothing like that. But if Jinn’s in your skin too, she can control your eardrums!”

Hank stuck in, “Yeah, then she can talk to you by vibrating your eardrums. But it’s kind of loud if she doesn’t have the volume right.”

And then I got it. “And she can hold my eardrums rigid, so I can’t hear a suspicious hypnotic command!”

Jade made a little hop and exclaimed, “Yeah! That’s exactly what I was gonna say!”

I told her, “I’m not thrilled with it, myself. But if someone you trusted had come to you when you were ten and said that hypnosis might help you fix your body to what you needed it to be, would you have done it?”

I could tell by the look in her eye that the answer was ‘there is no way in hell you could have stopped me’.

I sighed, “Look, you all know this. I have to try it! I can’t live like this, stuck half-and-half, the biggest freakjob on campus…”

“Thanks,” I added, “But I hate my body. I’ve got to try this. And having someone I trust watching out for me would let me relax during the hypnosis.”

Jade looked wide-eyed at me. “You really trust me that much?” She gave me a huge hug.

Nikki reluctantly led me into her room to get all the books on hypnosis. She muttered, “I didn’t like this when Jade was doing it, and I still don’t like it. BITs are dangerous things to mess with.”

She showed her superior maturity by sticking her tongue out at me. Of course, I didn’t mind. Fey sticking out her tongue at you is somewhat sexier than, say.. the centerfold in last month’s Playboy.

She pulled books off her shelf and stacked them in my arms. “Okay, here’s the stuff on the British Psychical Society… A history of famous mystics, Mesmer’s in there… I bought Gauld’s “A History of Hypnotism” after Jade read it, here ya go… I don’t have “The Science of Hypnotism” but Jade said the library had about six copies, can’t imagine why, it’s outdated, and really lame… Okay, here’s “Hypnotherapy: Theory and Practice”, that one’s a little too ‘hypnosis for dummies’ for my taste… And you’ll want to read this one, it’s got two decent chapters on the subject…”

I ended up with six books, plus a couple references I could look up in the library this week. Then I read Nikki’s books during our usual study group. It didn’t take that long. A couple of the books were pretty short, two only had small chunks on hypnosis, and none of them were technical.

But Jade kept pestering me about costume stuff while I was busy reading Nikki’s books. I was trying to get through all of them before study group wrapped up.

“Oh come on,” she insisted. “We all agreed we were doing a Tenchi Muyo theme…”

I muttered, “I didn’t agree on it…” Not that anyone had paid any attention to my objections. As usual.

“It’s not Kiyone or Mihoshi, is it?” I asked fearfully. I was definitely not ready to be walking around in high-heeled boots and a miniskirt.

“Oh no, it’s nothing like that. It’s from the later stuff. It’ll be great.”

I had no idea about some of the later Tenchi Muyo stuff, except for the fact that it was spun off of the Tenchi-and-Ryoko stuff. But the group had decided to do a Tenchi Muyo theme, since we already had an exact Ryoko copy - except for the costume.

Nikki said, “Jade came up with a great idea for my costume. I’m really looking forward to it.” She suddenly had an evil grin. “Especially the accessories...”

I should have been more suspicious. A lot more suspicious. I let her take my measurements, and I thought I was off the hook. Doh!

At least she let me finish reading Nikki’s books. Not that there was a lot of substance in those texts.

I put them back on Nikki’s shelf and wondered aloud, “Did I actually learn anything from those books? Other than the fact that Mesmer was a raving loony?”

The alarm went off, playing some of the gorgeously polyphonic part of Brass Monkey’s “Defective Invective Detective”. I thought about slapping the snooze button, but I ended up lying there and listening to the whole song before I got out of bed.

I didn’t drag myself out of bed as much as I phased out of bed. I went light, and sank out of my pajamas, right through the bunkbed. Once I was standing on the floor, I went normal and put on my bathrobe. I grabbed my kit, and it was off to Eden.

And the morning showers were their usual little slice of heaven. Between Fey and Vox and Bugs and Scrambler and Riptide, the whole room was resplendent with pulchritude. I did my now-standard ‘rush through the shower’ routine so it looked like I wasn’t ogling everyone. Too much. Then I commandeered a sink and spent as long as I could there, staring into the mirror at gorgeous hotties who weren’t noticing that I was taking a ridiculous amount of time flossing my teeth.

Then breakfast was a treat. Chef Peter had two orange rolls for me. Each one was about two inches across, so they weren’t the usual overwhelming clods of pastry that Tennyo and Lancer always seem to be stuffing into their maws. These were sweet but tart, with a rich yeast bread rolled up with a filling like a homemade orange marmalade, sliced into spirals, and topped with a drizzle of royal icing laden with orange zest and orange juice. Man, I could have eaten those until I exploded.

Then Powers Theory was sort of a downer. Filbert DID have me come down for a demo. Rats. I thought I had escaped that yesterday. The zombie-like voice caught me moments after I sat down next to Charmer. “Phase? Could you please come to the front of the room to assist with a demonstration of our current topical material?”

I left my stuff and floated over the desks to my right so I could walk down to the front. “Yes sir?”

He said to me, “Please step up on the dais with me, and let Mister Clark wheel out the equipment. This will be quite simple.”

Then he began talking, while Sean rolled a table full of junk up behind me. “Now apparently there is some confusion about the difference between extra-dimensional density changers and inter-dimensional density changers. Phase here is an extra-dimensional density changer, and we will be able to demonstrate a few key points of interest here…”

He talked a bit about differences between the two types of density changers, while most of the class sank into helpless comas. Then he had me go disruption-light and pass my hand through several sets of electronic toys. Each of them fizzled and sparked as I shredded them.

After that, he had me go light, stick my hand into a block of Lexan, and go heavy to disintegrate a chunk out of it. It stung, but I did it. Then I went light again and extracted my arm, leaving an Ayla-sized hand imprint eaten out of the plastic. Since the Lexan was a clear plastic, the entire class could see the effect.

After I was all done, Dr. Quintain said, “So this has applications in the real world. An important difference between the extra-dimensional density changers and the inter-dimensional density changers is in how they interact with, say, an opponent in power armor.”

Sean Clark stepped into the hallway for a second and came back in with someone in what looked like an old Roosevelt-class MCO power armor suit, complete with shoulder-mounted gatling gun that looked like it would be firing shells the size of my thumb.

Quintain explained, “We all face the potential threat of attack. Someday, any of us could be assaulted by opponents in power armor, whether or not we have done anything to deserve it. This is a somewhat-outdated suit of power armor donated by the MCO that was part of an information exchange brokered by the school. However, it is still potentially lethal to most of the students at Whateley. Few mutants are bulletproof at this level of firepower, and few of us would want to have to fight a man in power armor. The inter-dimensional density changer who can become immaterial, if given time to prepare, can easily pass through the armor, or let the weaponry pass through him. Or her, in this case.

“But the extra-dimensional density changer can do substantially more. Phase will now demonstrate. She will first pass a hand through the controls for the gatling gun, disabling the power armor’s firepower. Then she will pass an arm through the power armor and operator, disabling the armor and rendering the operator unconscious at the same time.”

Sean Clark must have known what I was thinking. I doubt that I was the Great Stone Face at that moment. He leaned forward and whispered, “He’s a volunteer from Security. He’s not a mutant, and doesn’t have a BIT.”

Okay, so I showed off a bit. I was already fully light, so I leapt through the power suit to get behind it. I went disruption-light before waving my hand through the control cables leading to the gatling gun. Sparks flew, as the subsystem dramatically shorted out. Then I waved an arm down the back of the power armor and through the operator. The battery system shorted out in a big flash of energy – which frankly stung a lot - and the power suit froze. It slowly toppled onto its back. I went heavy and caught it one-handed before it smashed into the floor. There was no point in letting the unconscious guy inside it get bruised up too.

After I lowered the power suit to the floor, Mister Clark murmured, “Could you help? I need to get him up on the table so I can wheel him out of here and off to the elevator.”

So I stayed heavy for a little longer. The power armor plus wearer was only about a third of a ton, so I had no trouble picking it up and setting it on the cart. Sean wheeled the stuff out, and I went back to my seat.

Möbius whispered, “Damn! That was WAY more impressive than Harrier’s demo last week! Are you sure you need a utility belt?”

Charmer slipped into French, as she was wont to do when she wasn’t thinking about it. “I must agree! That was very impressive. It is not surprising that you are one of the most powerful fighters in aikido class. Once again I am glad that I seldom have to spar against you.”

But she smiled as she said her last sentence. I had sparred against her enough to know that her physical skills were minimal – Jade could have taken her with one hand tied behind her back – but her magical skills were pretty hot. Not up in Fey’s class, but pretty darn good. She had a barricade charm that put up a magical wall I couldn’t get through (although I could dive through the floor and go under it, or go light and fly over it). She had a golem charm that was pretty effective, even if it wasn’t strong enough to stand up very long to me or Prism or Golden Girl. She had half a dozen other charms that she could whip out at the drop of a chapeau, and she was working on more spells. Maybe she wasn’t ready to fight the top four or five in our aikido class, but she was definitely in the next tier.

When I got back from classes that afternoon, I found an envelope in my mailbox. Not only was it marked as being from Trin and Macintyre, but it was hermetically sealed. And the inner envelope was covered in magical runes. I guessed that those were to prevent anyone from snooping in the contents or stealing the contents out of the envelope.

Easy way to test that? Me. After I took out the papers, I went light and tried to phase through the envelope. Nada. I couldn’t pass through the rune-covered envelope. It was almost like trying to reach through Nikki’s magical wall of force.

The papers were two of the reports I had requested. The first paper was known deviser drugs that affected primary and/or secondary sexual characteristics. The second was known mutant intersexed people throughout history, and how they resolved their physical problem.

Apparently, there were two drugs designed to turn normal males into shemales: Anlage, and the black-market drug Fem-Gen. Neither worked on anyone with a BIT or significant Regen abilities or reversion syndromes. And both of those were only for males who wanted to become shemales.

Anyway, I already knew way too much about Anlage, since that was the drug Gracie had taken to become a she-male. The effects of the Fem-Gen supposedly only lasted for a couple days, forcing users to become ‘addicts’ who need another fix every day or two. Then there were Lutinase and Androgenyet, two deviser drugs that had a history of limited successes on male mutants wishing to become female. There were two known cases of mutants with BITs that had done well with Lutinase - they had changed to fully female and still hadn’t reverted after a couple years - but there had been a far larger number of failures. Unfortunately, there was nothing out there for a M2FM like me who wanted to become a male again.

The second document was even more discouraging. There just weren’t that many known mutants who were intersexed or hermaphroditic, other than ones who were in that state as they passed onto something else. Like Hank. He was still a bilateral hermaphrodite, even if he was steadily moving toward solid guy-ness. Hardly anyone anywhere had ever had my problem, and none of them ever got fixed.

Trin and Macintyre had documentation on two intersexed mutants who died trying to become their original sex again, and two who committed suicide when they couldn’t fix their condition. There were short reports on three intersexed supers - one of them was passing as a sexpot supervillainess - who were brutally killed and/or gang-raped when caught by their enemies. Then there were two others who just vanished, or went into hiding, or somehow killed themselves without leaving any sign of their bodies, or something. But they had never been seen again.

The last case was the worst. I was astounded that Mother hadn’t fixated on it at some point. The South American superheroine Mujer Fuerte. She was intersexed but posing as female, just like I was. She was one of the leaders of Los Conquistadores, the South American superhero team. She tried using magic to fix her body. She went completely female, and went utterly insane. AND her powers jacked up several notches too. Oh My God. She had literally gone ‘Dark Phoenix’ on her team and a large area outside of Rio de Janeiro. She had to be put down by… Oh Jesus. It took all of Los Conquistadores, and the Brazilian army, and two full dropships of the Knights of Purity, and also two major supervillains who were long-time enemies of hers and took the opportunity to snuff her legally.

At the thought of going ‘Dark Phase’ on everyone I cared about at Whateley, I had to go toss my cookies. God, if I went insane or evil and also became powerful enough to go through force fields, there’d be nothing left around here except pieces of dead bodies.

After reading those reports, I was so discouraged that I just sat in my room and listened to REM for the rest of the evening.

At breakfast, Fey had news for me. “It looks like Circe will meet with you at noon. I’ll take you there.”

“Great,” I said. But I was suspecting it wouldn’t be great. Actually, I was figuring it would be pretty damned depressing. But I needed to find out, one way or the other.

I was nervous all morning long. Man, I wasn’t this nervous the first time I had dinner with Warren Buffett. I pretty much lost whatever Mrs. Ryan was saying about the costumes she was reviewing. I had a hard time concentrating in Spanish class. I completely tuned out Dr. Quintain – but that was completely normal, and may not have had anything to do with Circe.

I ate a quick lunch, and Nikki led me over to one of the classrooms used by the Magical Arts department for intro courses. Once again, we entered a normal-looking classroom with a big whiteboard at the head of the room, and an unobtrusive door beside the whiteboard, presumably so that the teacher could make a quick exit and not have to deal with students in the hallways.

Circe looked just like she had before. But this time I could see her for what she was as soon as we walked into the room. It was the way she stood. The way she moved. The power and authority in her every movement. It was almost like watching a human version of Aunghadhail.

I tried a polite smile. “Circe. I wanted to thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I hope I’m not interrupting your lunch or anything.”

She nodded, “Not at all. Fey spoke highly of you, and at our earlier meeting I saw that she was correct.”

I tried, “So… I assume you already know what I want to ask. It turns out that I don’t have GSD. The problem is my BIT. My question remains much the same. Can you magically change my BIT so I’d go back to me? Back to a guy?”

She sadly shook her head no. “There are rules about that. Really strict rules. And those rules are in place for very sound reasons. Mages and psis have tried altering people’s BITs, with essentially no complete successes, and a number of truly hideous failures. Even the partial successes usually have something drastically unpleasant happen. The classic example of that was The Gator, a superhero of the 1990’s who was, by your current system, probably an Exemplar-5 and looked like a gator-man hybrid…”

Oh God. The Gator. I knew where this story was going. Everyone knew this one. It had been in all the papers for days, back in 2001. Mother had fussed about it for months.

She continued, as if she hadn’t caught my huge flinch. “He talked Doctor Homunculus and Magistare into trying a spell to change his BIT, and it was a disaster. They did change his BIT. They changed him so that he looked like a handsome, six-foot-tall man. But he changed into a man with the strength of an Exemplar-5, the appetite of an Energizer-6, and the mind of an alligator. He went on a cannibalistic rampage through Miami and Fort Lauderdale that ended with his being killed by two teams of the Knights of Purity just as he was about to break into a dorm of college girls in the middle of the University of Miami campus.”

Yeah, I already knew a ton about The Gator’s infamous rampage. Thank God for Uncle Herb and his Knights of Purity. It was reassuring knowing that there were some good guys out there. Even if nothing about the magic issue was reassuring.

I sighed, “I was afraid of something like that. I mean, after the point you made the last time about repairing people’s GSD, I figured there was likely to be something like this, or the Magical Arts Department would have been fixing every weird BIT on campus.” I tried to keep my shoulders from sagging too much as I said, “Thank you for taking the time to talk with me, even if I am a Muggle.”

Circe didn’t reply. She just stared at me. I’d seen a cat watching a field mouse like that, so I didn’t think it was a good thing. Still, as long as I had Nikki in the room, I wasn’t too frantic. I figured that Circe was a really powerful mage, but I’d seen Fey in action enough to know that nobody was ever going to be pushing her around, at least magically speaking.

My first thought was “what the hell have you been smoking?” That was closely followed by “I don’t have time for this crap, I have a real academic curriculum to plan out!” Of course, I didn’t say either of those.

Instead, I thought. This wasn’t some sleazy carny act. This was Circe. This was a font of wisdom most mortals would cut off their right arm just to meet. And she had just given me advice.

If I ran into Alan Greenspan again at one of his wife’s parties, and he gave me advice on economic trends, would I ignore him? Of course not.

If I bumped into Warren Buffett again and he gave me some stock tips, would I ignore him? Hell no.

If I had lunch with Bill Gates again and he gave me some advice on future directions in computing, would I ignore him? No way.

So why was I even thinking twice about this? Okay, so my schedule was already pretty crowded. So this wasn’t one of my strengths. So I didn’t know what I would be getting myself into.

She smiled slightly. “No, you are not. But you have all the characteristics I always looked for in a potential student.”

She explained, “First, you must understand something. You do not need to be a powerful mage like Fey…” She stared at me, but she was seeing something else. “…Or Majestic.. in order to learn magic. I always required several things in my apprentices. A thirst for knowledge. A will of iron. Strong morals which had already been tested. A fundamental understanding of your small part of the world. A willingness to take advice even when you are used to being too smart to listen to those around you. Some of my finest pupils didn’t have an iota of Fey’s power when they started.

“You think of yourself as weak to magic, and yet you have no trouble seeing Fey as a friend and teammate. You recognize Aunghadhail within her, and The Kellith within Ms. Waite. You are already accepting precepts which invalidate the world you were raised in. And yet your understanding of your own small part of the universe is so intense that you are already on your way to becoming a billionaire in your own right.

“You have been tempered in fires not of your own making. You have learned the lesson of the wizard who lost his magic. You have learned the lesson of the apprentice who had to face dragons. Your moral courage has not failed you.

“You may never be Merlin or Morgan le Fay, but you can learn more about magic than you believe possible. You can learn the precepts and skills. You have the will power to force the magic to do your bidding. And you have the wisdom to know who you should listen to, and who you should ignore.

“One more thing. You currently feel that you are weak to magic, and weak to psychic powers and weak to other powers. You seek ‘holdouts’ to protect you in times of crisis. Learning magic could someday give you more support than you are currently prepared to grasp. Just as learning martial arts is teaching you more than you currently realize. Some day, you may need magical abilities, and not your mutant powers as a Warper.”

I swallowed hard and asked, “So is there an Intro to Magical Arts course next term?”

She smiled, “Spring term. There will be enough interest for a single class. It will be held third period. On the days when I am asked to give guest lectures, I will expect you to ask intelligent questions.”

She rose from her chair and strolled out through the teachers’ door before I could make my legs work again.

I cleared my throat and said, “Yeah. Me too. Did I just hear what I thought I heard?”

She murmured, “Uhh, yeah. I think you might even have a mentor, if you want to try and get serious about it.”

I told her, “I’m not going to start it if I’m not going to get serious about it.”

She winced, “I figured that much. But.. Ayla.. there’s something else you need to know. Circe hasn’t personally mentored a student here for a long time. Maybe she’s not offering to mentor you now, but it sure sounded like it to me. People talk about stuff like this in the MA Department. The last student Circe mentored was a Wizard-2/Manifester-2 named Wight, back in the late 80’s.”

She pursed her lips. “You shouldn’t. Wight didn’t survive her senior year at Whateley. She went home for Christmas, and ran into.. something. No one knows exactly what. But whatever it was, it gutted her like a fish and used her disemboweled carcass in some sort of necromantic ritual. When word got around campus that Wight was dead, people realized something important. Circe had already taken Wight’s name off all the Magical Arts course rosters for the winter and spring terms.”

Fey stressed, “You fail to understand. Circe took Wight’s name off the rosters during fall Combat Finals. Two full weeks before Wight was killed. She knew what was going to happen to Wight. She knew Wight was not going to come back. A lot of people think that Circe chose Wight as an apprentice during Wight’s sophomore year, because of what Circe foresaw was going to happen to Wight two years later.”

I tried, “Okay, but that’s an isolated event. In my family, we have a saying. Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

She frowned, “Then I’d better tell you about the apprentice before Wight. According to Earth Mother, in the seventies, Circe came to Whateley and within two days picked out an apprentice. Gleaner. An Exemplar and genius gadgeteer who didn’t have any magical abilities. In three years, Gleaner became known as one of the rising stars in a couple fields of magical arts. During Gleaner’s senior year, he tangled with something that erupted out of a cave about ten miles from here. His coat and shoes were found. They weren’t too badly damaged. It looked like he managed to banish whatever was trying to escape. The rest of Gleaner was never found. The Magical Arts department has his coat and shoes locked up in a vault. It’s been over thirty years, and psychometrists still can’t touch those items without going insane, or at least being driven into a temporary coma.”

She pressed on, “That’s right. According to Sir Wallace, in the 1930’s, Circe chose an apprentice in England and trained her for years. The woman went up against some of the Thule Gemeinschaft during World War II. She was awarded the OBE by Churchill. Posthumously. Her skull was all that they ever found of her. It was given a burial at sea, because no one could contain the magical after-effects of whatever was done to her.”

She took a deep breath and insisted, “Phase, you have to understand. Circe has mentored God-knows-how-many apprentices over the centuries. The legends about them all have them fighting evil. And dying horribly. Having Circe want to mentor you is not regarded as a good thing around here!”

Oh crap. I realized that my knees had given out, and I was sitting down in a chair. I thought out loud. “So I have two choices. I can accept what she’s offering, and probably end up being destroyed by horrific monsters. Or I can refuse the offer, and end up being boned by the same things, but being utterly unprepared to stop them from getting any further.”

Fey murmured, “It’s not that simple. There are most likely other options. This isn’t black-and-white. Depending on a prophecy - much less depending on your personal interpretation of a prophecy - is notoriously uncertain. And we don’t even know that Circe has seen any kind of augury. Your case may not be like the others. But you need to know.”

I snorted. “Yeah. ‘Know enough to be afraid.’ That’s the motto of Transylvania Polytechnic University in the webcomic ‘Girl Genius’. I guess I’d better get started learning enough to be afraid of the right things. Spring term?”

“Spring term,” she winced. She took my hand and said, “But remember. Wight and Gleaner and all those others? They were alone. You’re not. You’ve got a team that’ll be alongside you when you need it. Maybe somebody like Wight wasn’t up to the task, but you’ll have me. And Sara. And Billie. And the rest of TK.”

“Thanks. Thanks a ton.” And I hugged her. She gave me a big squeeze. Right then, I really needed a hug.

And then I had to focus again before I went to aikido class, so I wouldn’t get my ass kicked all over the dojo.

After trig class, I dropped in on Hawthorne again. Static Girl and Frostbite both wanted help with their math. Of course, they also wanted to chat. Well, that was why I was dropping by regularly. Then I visited Puppet for a bit and talked with her about the upcoming Golden Kids meeting.

I promised, “Well, since you can’t, I’ll come visit on Sunday and dish all the dirt.”

“Oh, probably. I bet there’ll be half a dozen people who want to tell stories about someone else around here.”

That evening, after dinner, we were all studying in Kimba Korner, except Jade. She kept dashing off to get more piecework for people to try on. For me, she had a tapered, loosely-fitting shirt for me to try on. She said I’d wear one of the usual supersuits under it. Okay, that seemed workable. She also had something that was like a longer version of the top from a karate gi, and something like a kimono. She said she’d have the rest of the outfit ready soon.

I backed through the wall into my room, and she came around the corner to meet me there. As she checked the fit of the pieces, I talked to her about what she’d already tried to fix her BIT.

She said, “Well, you know about the hypnosis.” I nodded. “And the Lutinase stuff.” I gave her a nasty glare. I still couldn’t believe she hadn’t talked to us about taking a potentially dangerous drug, and that she hadn’t realized how the drug was screwing with her emotions. “And Chou.” I nodded on that too. I already knew that none of those were viable options for me. “Let’s see, what else. I talked to Nikki. And I talked to Mega-Girl about how her PK shell was changing her physically.”

“Okay, I didn’t know about that last one.” I did have it on my list, but I hadn’t realized that Jade might have been way ahead of me on it.

She shrugged unhappily. “Marty pretty much told me to kiss off. She told me not to bother talking to her about it until I’d been trying to change for as long as she had.”

Hmm. That didn’t sound like Megs. Maybe they’d just misunderstood each other. Or maybe Jade had caught Marty at a bad time. At any rate, I figured I could do a little better than that. I had an ace in the hole there, since Delta Spike owed me a big one. Or two or three big ones.

I told her, “Look, I’m going to go talk to Marty, and if I find out anything encouraging, I’ll let you know. Okay?”

She hastily made a couple adjustments on the fabric over my shoulders and at my waist. Then she measured the distance from the hem to the floor. She made a couple notes on a scrap of paper, and took off again. Man, she was way too serious about this costume thing.

I decided that I might as well go up and talk to Marty. Or at least give it a shot.

I got up to ‘Damnation Alley’ without Hippolyta charging over and confronting me. I figured that was a good omen. I knocked twice.

I opened the door onto a scene that I would have told people was a caricature of Marty and Elaine. Marty was sitting at her desk studying. In full superhero regalia. Did she sleep in her Mega-Girl outfit? Elaine was hard at work at her desk, working with a soldering iron and some small electronics. While dressed like a bimbo. She was wearing a crop top that was cut so high the bottoms of her boobs were peeking out. That went with a low-riding pleated plaid miniskirt and a pair of high-heeled pumps.

Well, it didn’t really go with the skirt and heels, if you know what I mean. Elaine may have managed to turn into a girl, but she hadn’t figured out a devise to upload fashion sense into her brain.

Not that I was going to say so. Even if it wasn’t rude, I didn’t want to be responsible if she actually TRIED to build a devise that could upload skills like that into her brain.

Marty and Elaine both turned to greet me. Okay, so they weren’t style goddesses. But they were scorchingly hot. Marty had that whole ‘bubbly blond Hollywood starlet with serious breast implants’ look going for her. Elaine was more the ‘steamy brunette Playboy Playmate’ look.

It suddenly dawned on me. Next year, I’d be a sophomore, and be living on this floor. Marty and Elaine would be juniors, but might still be on the floor. I might actually get to shower next to them! Woo-hoo!

Okay, they weren’t as hot as Vox, much less Fey, but still, they were smoking. And they were easily distracted, so I might get lots of opportunities to ogle them while they were naked in the shower room.

Delta started off, “Oh! Phase, I never did thank you for what you did at the Weapons Fair. I don’t know why these things always seem to happen to me...”

I was pretty sure everyone else did. Not that I was going to say so, when I was about to be pestering her buddy for a favor in a few seconds.

“…but it was a total disaster. I didn’t make a single sale, and everything I had was a total loss. Even my power harness.”

I chipped in, “Yeah, I think you’re lucky that you didn’t get quick-fried to a crackly crunch yourself.”

“Well, I did pick up a few burns, but they’re mostly healed.” She demonstrated by standing up and pulling up her crop top until her breasts lunged out.

It was about all I could do not to let my eyeballs pop out. But there were definitely red marks on her back. The burns were almost healed, but they must have been pretty painful for a while. “Oh. I see why you’re wearing that crop top.”

She nodded as she gingerly tugged her top back into place, “Yeah, some of these spots on my back are still pretty uncomfortable. But I’ll have my new power harness ready in a couple days, and this time I’ll have an ablative plastic in my costume to absorb excess heat in case the harness burns out again. Hmm… Ablative coatings…”

And suddenly she was lost in Devisor-Land, making hasty entries into her PDA and muttering to herself.

“Marty, that’s not why I’m here. I wanted to ask you how your PK shell works. I hear it’s changing your body from male to female.”

She pouted, “Yeah, but it’s taking just forever! And I’m trying to stay babed out like this all the time now, because my skin itches like crazy if I drop my PK for more than a few minutes, and it’s really expensive buying new clothes, and Feral says I don’t know how to put together an outfit, but Dee-Ess says I look just fine, and…”

She babbled on like that for another two minutes. I politely sat there and nodded at appropriate moments, as if I were really interested in hearing how hard it was to shop for baby tees in her size at the Whateley store.

I finally butted in, “Look, if you’re really interested in good clothing that’ll look good on you, you ought to try Rogers’ Fabric Boutique in Dunwich. You’ve seen the newer stuff Tennyo’s wearing, right?”

I managed not to roll my eyes. “Well, Cecilia did those for Tennyo. And she’s got a mutant power over fabric, so she whipped together those outfits in about ten minutes.”

“Wow!” she exclaimed. Then she paused. “But I’ve got a budget I have to stick to. Dad’s really not happy about me turning into a girl, and I’ve got a bunch of icky stuff from when I was a boy, so I can’t spend a ton on new clothes. I mean, it’s totally not fair, because…”

And then she was gone again. She rambled on for a while about how all these other girls in Poe had really incredible clothes, like Fey and Bugs and Quake, and she was stuck with stuff in her closet that she really hated. Well, I could sympathize with that. If all I had to wear were outfits like what Elaine was wearing that very second, I’d be tearing my hair out.

It took me a while to get her back onto my topic. “So how exactly is your PK shell altering your body?”

“Oh! That. I don’t really get it. Elaine’s explained it a bunch of times, but I don’t know the science stuff enough to follow what she’s saying. But somehow, my PK shell is attuned to the patterns or something in my body, so the more I keep it up, the more it’s changing my body. What I hate is that it’s gonna take maybe another year before I really look like a girl underneath, and maybe three or four years before it turns me into a girl totally. Then I’ll look the same, whether I got my PK shell up or not. All this’ll be ME!”

“So do you think you could make a PK shell like that around someone else, and attune it to their biological patterns?” I asked, trying not to sound too desperate.

That was when Elaine came out of her fugue state and stuck her cute little nose in our conversation. Every time Marty tried to give me some advice, Elaine stuck in her own two cents. In Elaine’s case, that was more like a whole mason jar full of pennies.

She cut across Marty and said, “Oh, you couldn’t do that directly. First of all, Marty’s a Manifestor, but she’s a MAN-4:a. You know what that means?”

“It means that the PK shell forms at distance zero. It has to be touching her. So she can’t form a PK shell around anyone else. That’s what your little friend Jade was asking about at the start of the term, wasn’t it?” She didn’t let me get a word in edgewise. “Well, even if she could do that, it wouldn’t help. The other thing is that Marty’s not an Exemplar. She’s a faux-Exemplar, since her body’s re-forming under the control of her mutant power. But if she was an Exemplar, then her BIT would keep fixing her body back to the way it was before. Since she’s not, she doesn’t have a BIT to mess things up, and she can use her PK shell to fix her body.”

“Oh yeah, and her PK shell only does this because her manifestation of it makes it attuned to her biological patterns. She can’t change the appearance of the shell, and she can’t change the fundamental frequencies of her PK shell, and so it can only affect HER body. But I’ve been studying it a lot, and I really think this is the wave of the future. You know, if I had some venture capital, I could really get started on it in a big way. It’s only a matter of time before we unlock the secrets of biomorphology, and then EVERYONE’S going to want to jump on the bandwagon. It’ll be the next big

Ayla #4: “Ayla and the Tests”

- a Whateley Universe Tale