Chapter 3: Desperate People

"This seems fun..." I say to myself as I push through the doors to my new job, exercising newly restructured vocal cords. Well, it's not a job, but instead a volunteer position. I'm set with money for the moment, and figure now's as good a time as any to try the opposite of being a cop. In hindsight, being police was kind of fun, but not nearly worth the hassle. That's not even mentioning how I hate any magical law enforcement as a rule, and only joined in the first place for the novelty.

Inside the building is immediately a smell I've been told is unpleasant: desperate people. They're sleeping or chatting as they wait, eyeing me as I intentionally ignore them. I suppose that's what I'd expect from a soup kitchen.

I've been trying to link an actual brain to my core, to see if I could enhance my comprehension ability. Right now, trying to use it is like trying to type with the keyboard lagging a few seconds behind. More trouble than its worth. I'll revert to the basic functions of a pseudo-brain later...

Behind the counter is a thin plywood door that must have been intended for a small closet or a particularly sad bathroom instead a kitchen. Once I turn the poorly fitting knob, I find who I'm looking for. A smiling fifty-something with a bushy beard and a nose that seems to flare on every breath. Kapil Kulkarni, the guy in charge. 'Owner' and 'manager' both seem like the wrong word, but I can't place the right one for the person running a place like this.

"You must be Lena." Kapil says, smiling. I firmly shake his hand, but don't smile. I've decided that since I'm doing free labor, I should be allowed to entertain myself. As such, I'm going to see how long I can go without faking facial expression before anyone gets suspicious.

"Yep, that's me. Good to meet you, Kapil."

He nods, watching me carefully. "Are you excited for your first day?"

"Yeah. I'm hoping it'll teach me something."

His brow furrows a bit, like he's already suspicious. Between Mirka and Kapil, I'm starting to think I'm not nearly as convincingly human as I think I am. Or maybe its just anxiety, or suspicions of my own. I'm never truly scared, due to my lack of adrenaline, but my mind tends to build impenetrable battlements of disquieting possibilities.

I scribble something into my pocket journal as I follow him. Not the most flattering trait of mine, but I'm not going to omit it because I don't like the truth.

#8: I am distrusting of people's intentions. Any small change in expected behavior is interpreted as a threat until I can find a better explanation.

He starts showing me around, introducing me to a couple other volunteers, and eventually has me cutting vegetables with him. Looks easy enough. I follow his lead, and start cutting. Of course, he made it look a lot easier than it is. Part of me wants to just create a multi-bladed cutting tool, but I'm holding off on that for now. According to the internet, a surprising number of people think sorcerers are blasphemous and should be shunned. I'm not going to risk the experiences I can gain from my volunteer work for the sake of making it easier.

Still, this is a bit embarrassing. By the time I'm finished with a single carrot, Kapil is done with with five others needed for the first pot, and starting on stalks of celery.

"Don't do much cooking at home?" He asks, playfully smiling at me.

"You could say that." Truthfully, I've never cooked. It's completely redundant for me. In private, I subsist on vitamin supplements and sugar. In public, I eat whatever's blandest at a restaurant along with sugary soda to keep up appearances.

"So why a soup kitchen, then? I'm glad to have anyone willing to help, but it's a strange place for someone who's rarely cut vegetables before."

I start chopping celery, keeping my movements precise and measured over fast and sloppy. "It seemed like a new experience. It was between this and an animal shelter, and I've spent enough time with animals."

He slides away the second stalk of celery he's cut with his knife. "Now you have me curious. You're wealthy enough to volunteer full time, and worked extensively with animals. Born into money?"

I shake my head. "It's a story I don't want to share."

"Fair enough. Don't want to pry. We're all here for a reason, it seems." He flashes a smile, waiting for me to finish chopping the stalk of celery. Once the final knife stroke is complete, he directs me up front instead, suggesting I might be better suited for working the counter. He pats me on the back, before returning to the kitchen. Not patronizing, just efficient. I like the atmosphere here.

I text Mark. My usual go to for situations I want to share with someone else. Plus, I'm getting a kick out of confusing the hell out of him lately.

Me: Did you know that you're supposed to know how to cook?

Mark: Cook what?

Me: In general.

Mark: What does that even mean?

Me: I'm working at a soup kitchen full time, and cooking is strongly encouraged.

Mark: What happened to being magic police?

Me: Got shot in the head, then quit.

Mark: Oh. Of course. That makes sense. Also, thanks for quitting, I'm doing all the morning reports now.

Me: L

I accidentally send a partial text as I'm distracted by someone flagging me down from the other side of the counter. She's not even 20 yet, if I were to guess. That's depressing. I walk over to her, stone-faced. She's here early by a few minutes.

"You're early. How did you get in here?"

"I'm Kapil's kid." She says it in mild irritation, like she repeats it every time she shows up here. Must have a high turnover of volunteers.

"That's less depressing than I thought." I start scooping the foods I only mostly recognize into a disposable foam container, adding in the plastic cutlery and a couple paper napkins. She takes it wordlessly, before sitting down at a table, and digging through her scuffed purse for her phone. It's beat to absolute hell, more of the screen is cracked than isn't. That went right back to being depressing.

With her being served, the kitchen unofficially opens, and I begin serving the long line. I continue my game of not bothering to mimic a facial expression or tone of voice. Some of the happier and lonely people seem offended I'm not making conversation, and some of the more embarrassed people seem to appreciate the dispassion. Its something, I suppose. Maybe part of the job is intuiting what each person needs in regards to their emotional state. I could be well suited for that, considering I have experience in intentionally making myself appear as all types of emotions... Then again, I'm specifically trying to avoid being someone I'm not. I wonder how other people do it. I'll ask Kapil after the shift for his advice on the topic.

Most of my spare attention is devoted to watching his daughter. She ate fast, likely trying to avoid being at the cafeteria style seating when people actually came in. I watch her stand in a corner of the building near the door, intentionally secluding herself.

It didn't take long for me to figure out why she was doing it. A few other people near her age, both above and below, start bothering her. Clearly, Kapil's kid is being bullied. A shame they're not actively threatening her, so I could be more justified in cracking their little skulls. That's something for the journal, actually.

#9: I don't like seeing the weak being taken advantage of or harassed, even by the other weak. People in fragile states should be left alone. I think I have some kind of empathy, if a targeted one.

Oh, someone pushed her. A paper prescription bag fell out of her bag, and I see one of the older ones, maybe 19, snatch it and bolt for the door. That's my cue.

It's a common myth that lactic acid is what causes muscle soreness after exercise, when in reality, that buildup is is very fleeting and only causes that temporary burning when actively exercising and your muscles aren't receiving enough oxygen. To counteract this, I've gotten very good at oxygenating my muscles. I've altered my lungs to have roughly fifty percent more alveoli for increased gas exchange and stronger muscles to inflate and deflate them, letting me cycle more air if I need to. The upshot is that I don't get short term muscle fatigue to any noticeable extent.

That, along with the dense leg musculature, is why I'm able to chase down the guy who stole the prescription despite his large lead. I carefully grab the collar of his shirt, watching the bag in his hand to make sure he doesn't drop it.

He, thankfully, does not. Instead, he throws it into the air. Fair play, I have to let go of him to make sure I catch it. I don't have any particular interest in chasing him down anyway, now that the immediate situation is fixed. I can't resist casually read the label, wondering what was so important that he would steal a prescription from the daughter of the guy who runs the soup kitchen.

Testosterone Cypionate. I know the first part, but not the second. Maybe a synthetic androgen? For as good as I've gotten at modification of my own composition, I still don't know the names of half of what I'm altering the levels of. Not to mention, I've only seen significant amounts of testosterone in...

Oh. Oh oh oh! Well damn, now I want to steal it, at least to put a name to the chemical.

I shove it into my pocket, and check the time. I still have another half hour left for dishing out the food. Maybe I can convince the child to let me borrow their medication after. It would be better if they didn't tamper with the bottle yet, though...

I'd usually just deconstruct and reconstruct something like this, but I'm very bad at copying text. It always comes out as smudgy and tough to read, for some reason, despite me having very fine control over what I can produce. My working theory is the part of my mind which handles creation doesn't work as well if it can't figure out the way something connects to the whole, but its impossible to say since most of the production is subconscious. I've had similar problems in the past with other small touches on inanimate objects, such as trying replicate electronics usually results in completely useless circuitboards. However, black ink tattoos are perfectly fine, since they're pockets of skin which get filled with a different material. A limitation of my inorganic manufacturing, I suppose.

Regardless, I jog back down the sidewalks and through the doors, and am greeted by Kapil glaring at me. I quickly take my post behind the counter, standing next to him.

"What, had to take a smoke break?" he asks, more irritated than joking.

"Your kid got a prescription stolen, actually, but thanks for being a dick about it." I offer him the bag, his child is nowhere in sight.

"God damn it, those little bastards..." He takes the bag, grimacing. "My son is going to be very relieved. Thank you, Lena."

"Do me a favor in return. There's around twenty-five minutes left in the day. Hold onto it until then. I have a solution to your problem, no pun intended."

"Pun?"

"Solution. Like chemical solution."

"Oh. You didn't seem like the joking type. I'm going to go tell my son that you got this back, but I can hold it for the time being." He doesn't waste time, and starts looking for his child in the back rooms of the soup kitchen, leaving me alone at the tail end of the serving period.

I pass the rest of the day in mild boredom. There is sense of helpfulness, certainly, but it feels less impactful than I expected. Maybe because I didn't make the food? Not sure what it means, like much of what I'm learning. I'll figure it out eventually, I hope.

-

I lean awkwardly against yet another plywood door, this time inside a little break room. By little, I mean little. Barely big enough for three people to sit, and it stinks of weed and cigarette smoke. Ideal for this purpose, infinitely better than risking anyone overhearing.

Kapil is looking between me and his child with a stern expression, unwavering in intensity as he sits on a few stacked milk crates. "This is my son, Abhay."

His son is waiting nervously on a folding chair, like he was outside the principal's office at school, awaiting judgement for a misdeed.

"Hey, Abhay," I say, trying to get the conversation rolling.

He nods once at me, but doesn't quite reach my shell's eyes with his own.

"I'm a sorcerer. That's the first thing."

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Both Kapil and Abhay seem a little startled by that, suddenly intently fixed on me. Abhay especially transitions from nervous to anxious, scooching his chair ever so slightly closer to his father.

"It would take a long time to explain the extent of what I can do, but I can summarize it like this. If I have the raw materials I need, I can duplicate objects. I see two solutions to your prescription problem, and you can take either or both. First, I can just give you a gun, or a-"

"No! Are you out of your mind?! You're not giving my son a weapon!" Kapil stands up from the milk cartons and intersperses himself between me and Abhay, which is impressive considering how small the room is.

I hold up my hands defensively. Kapil doesn't pose any actual threat to me, but I did intentionally block their exit in case they tried to run. "Jesus, relax. Second option, you give me the prescription, and I synthesize as many as you want, Abhay. If its similar to regular testosterone and suspended in an oil, it's easy enough to make. I can probably improve the shelf life on it, too. No promises on that."

Abhay starts tearing up a bit. From what I can tell, they aren't happy tears. "I... can't afford that. I'm already skipping doses. Thank you, but even if you cut the-"

"For hell's sake, kid, you're eating at a soup kitchen, and don't seem to be doing it by choice. I'm obviously not going to charge you. I just need your trust with taking your current prescription so I can synthesize it."

He sits, stunned.

"I'd give you some kind of collateral, but I actually forgot to go to an ATM... hang on. Here." I offer him my phone. "Dunno what's it worth, but its something."

He doesn't take it, but offers me the bottle. I like this kid.

"This'll just be a minute." I stick it into my pocket, closing my eyes.

Silicon dioxide, boron oxide... nothing too noteworthy in the glass itself. Still, probably going to use up all my boron making these bottles. Gonna have to buy a bunch of borax to strip the boron from. I'll skip the label entirely. The lid isn't too bad, and the contents of the bottle are simple organic affairs of seed oil and the hormone supplement.

"I can expect to make a bottle of this every ten minutes. Sorry, I don't have as much boron as I expected. Can probably cap out at around... fifteen? They have a shelf life of around two or three years already, based on the label. I have no idea how long fifteen bottles will last."

"A... long time," Abhay says, forcing back a different kind of tears.

"Oh. Good, then."

I half-focus on production for a minute or so, both of them staring at me awkwardly.

"You don't have to stay here, you know. I'm gonna listen to music. Makes it easier." By easier, I of course mean less boring, and less unsettling being stared at by two guys in a very enclosed space.

I move aside to let them both leave. I withdraw my earbuds from my void and turn them on before I continue the process, sitting down on the now vacant folding chair. There's something meditative about the process, as I withdraw the first bottle, tossing it up and down as the music plays.

'The flowers that would bloom

And the voice of the waters

Beneath the shifting sky

The clarity of mind.'

-

The drive back is particularly dull, since something's wrong with the cable connecting to my phone. I'll have to fix it once I get back home, or maybe just buy a new one. Oh, right, borax.

I turn off the highway into a hardware store. Just a five pound bag will be enough, I figure. According to the internet, boron is something like 11% of the weight in borax, and half a pound is more than enough. I'll just release the excess hydrogen and oxygen into the air. I'll keep the sodium for now, though. I'm low on that, too. I park my car, and step inside, knowing the place like the back of my hand.

I go straight to the aisle I need, picking up the green bag, dwarfed beneath the tall metal scaffold shelves, and take it to the counter. Did I need anything else? Probably not... I pay for it with my card, and drive home.

I lock eyes with the security guard again. It's become something of a game between us, with him smiling and chuckling to himself every time the elevator door closes. It makes me happy to see him laugh. I almost write it down in my journal, before I remember its already in there. I must be doing a good job with it, if I'm proving my own rules.

I walk into the apartment, locking the door behind me, and setting down the bag of borax. I open it up, and retract my shell. I have very limited senses without a shell, maybe five feet of... its hard to describe what the sense is. The best description I have for it is something like three dimensional smell, where I can sense the chemical makeup of things around me. My movement is slow as well, floating at something like a half-mile per hour.

I submerge myself into the borax. It's the cleanest and most efficient way to process a lot of material. I can get through about a pound of inorganic material a minute this way. I relax, no longer having to listen to the dozens of chemical signals a shell puts out. Pure tranquility, lost in my own void.

I really need to clean my inner world out of things that aren't just raw chemical elements. There's my Lena shell, my raven shell, a gun with a couple spare magazines, about a pound of raw sugar for emergencies, $26 in cash, a few outfits, my journal, six pens, my wallet, a buck knife, a first aid kit, three different multitools, a screwdriver set, a few towels, an umbrella, a large waterproof tarp, two pairs of earbuds, a few kinds of batteries, like twelve different receipts, a few kinds of sandwiches as another experiment on the passage of time, a lighter, that one guy I killed's wallet... oh, there's two hundred and thirty-two dollars in here. Note to self.

I put my shell back on, now that I've absorbed the borax and the bag it came in, ready to process it. Someone is standing in front of me.

I rip my gun from my void, ignoring the horrible tearing sensation, and point it at the intruder.

Mirka blinks a couple times, smiling. "Hey."

"Shit, sorry." I gently return my gun to my inner world, making sure to take my time. Usually, it takes a few seconds to free an object from my void. If I need it quickly, I can basically tear it out. It doesn't 'hurt' exactly, but it's a feeling similar to the shock you get when you feel a tooth chip, or the sensation of getting deep paper cut, but across my entire mind. Incredibly unpleasant.

"You good? You look... the same as you always do, but you're not reacting to me." She folds her arms in concern.

"Yeah, I'm fine. It's unpleasant when I remove something from myself too quickly."

"That sucks. Sorry for startling you, I assumed you could tell I was there."

"I can only sense about five-ish feet out without a shell."

She smirks at that. "Must have been a crazy sensation when you had eyes for the first time."

"It was... thanks." Something about her saying that made me feel a positive emotion in both my shell and my core. Odd. It's familiar, faintly.

"Thanks?"

"Yeah. Gave me a positive feeling I can't name."

Her smirk stays as she speaks. "I appreciate the note, since I can't tell with you."

I haven't been making facial expressions all day. I must have forgotten to start again. "Sorry. I'll try to emote more."

"Nah. It's your apartment, do what makes you comfortable. I'm just your houseguest."

Again, that same pleasant emotion. Bizarre. "Right. Thanks."

"Construction's still underway at Casa de Mirka. Won't be too long. Another few days, probably."

I take out my journal, and write in a few more pages.

#10: I feel a certain kinship to people uncomfortable in their bodies, and want to help them if they would appreciate it.

#11: I have an aversion to cleaning. I don't know why. I might just be lazy.

#12: I enjoy music, lately obscure folk. This isn't a trait I picked up anywhere to blend in, my music taste has always been pretty obscure, and makes any conversation about music grind to a halt.

"Whatcha writing now?" Mirka asks, having plopped down on the largely unused couch.

"That I hate cleaning, that I like obscure music, and that some people and I have a shared aversion to bodies. It took me forever to make one I was comfortable in."

"What brings that up? Something with the volunteer work?"

"Mhmm. Some kid was having his testosterone supplements stolen, so I made him fifteen bottles of the stuff. Apparently, that's a lot."

She starts chuckling. "I'll take your word for it. Pretty funny you're talking about the manufacture and distribution of a controlled substance to a cop, though."

I sit down on the couch next to her. "Yeah, because that's the thing that's going to get me in trouble. Do you need any medication?"

She shrugs. "I'll be fine, I can just drop by the pharmacy like I always do."

"Don't trust me?"

"No, I just don't want to put you to work since I can do it myself."

Yet again, that emotion. I haven't felt it in years, not since before my office job. "That's the third time I've felt that good feeling today. I'm going to figure this out."

"Let's do it. Maybe there was a common thread here?"

Four times now. Its starting to frustrate me. Like a word I can't remember, or a snippet of a song I can't find the name of.

"First one was you saying that it must have been weird to have eyes for the first time. Second one was you saying not to force myself to fake emotions. Third is you saying you can pick up prescriptions without needing to bother me. Fourth is you suggesting there's a common thread." I scratch the back of my head, enjoying the release of endorphins.

She gets a funny look on her face. "Do you mean being respected?"

"Respected? No, I've had people respect my abilities before."

"Not your magic stuff. I mean respecting you as a person. Trying to understand your experiences, caring what you have to say, not forcing you to do things you don't want to, offering to help?"

It's that. I suppose it's pretty obvious in hindsight. My first five years of life were a proto-consciousness with a simple need for finding energy I could place into myself with haphazardly arranged appendages. I caught insects sparingly, having low energy needs of maybe one cockroach a month. All of it was spent within that one abandoned office building where I was born. Things only changed after five summers, when my consciousness finally grew enough to allow me awareness of myself. I used chemicals from the insects I ate to create my first shell. A cockroach, carrying my core on its back. Just in time, too, since my home was demolished a month later.

I haven't had unconditional respect in a while, not since the second person I revealed my core to. Hell, I barely had conditional respect at my office job.

"Exactly. Thank you, I appreciate it."

The amusement on Mirka's face fades quickly. "You didn't know what that feels like?"

"I guess not. My first interactions with people were with me disguising myself as an adult, so I didn't have a long period where I was cared for like humans do. Closest thing I've had was a singular friend who helped me a lot. Plus, you're one of maybe three people who know I'm not human."

"That's a little bleak... I'm not great with this stuff, but I'm here if you need to talk about it." She rests a hand on my shoulder, smiling at me. I force myself to match the smile, until a playful glare from Mirka makes me stop.

Again, I take out my journal.

#13: I enjoy being respected and cared for, especially by someone who knows my identity.

Mirka snatches the journal and pen from me as I finish, and quickly writes 'Mirka Approved' followed by a smiley face before returning it. "There. Now you always know one of your first friends cares."

Looking at her quick handwritten name and approval actually does give me that feeling of being cared for. It's a soft feeling, a thin mist that stretches infinitely. I hope it stays. Maybe I'll figure out how to give it to other people at some point, too.

-

Kapil watches me as I produce a cartridge for an insulin pen from my pocket. He was able to convince one of the regulars to let him borrow it, and in turn gave it to me to replicate.

The complexity of an object or substances doesn't change the difficulty in producing it, only the time is takes. There's no real difference between making the protein titin, which has about 500,000 individual atoms, and insulin, which has less than 1,000. All of the actual chemical arrangement is handle subconsciously, so long as I know what I'm creating. It's the main reason why I can duplicate what I decompose, but can't just make anything I want. Without a blueprint, I have to know the arrangement of all those elements in full and where they go, which I can only do with the simplest of things.

Now that I have this cartridge, though, I can start making them. And relatively quickly, too. Insulin is mostly just oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen with a dash of sulphur. The plastics are the same, with a little nitrogen added in. All extremely easy to acquire.

"So, why the pocket?" Kapil asks, taking the cartridge I hand him as I start on another. "Maybe the magic is in the pants, and not the woman."

"Gross."

He exhales through his nose in amusement a few times. "I'll assume that you don't want to answer, like all my other questions about your magics."

"Correct."

"So is this how you make your money? Making medicine?" He starts finding ways to look busy, taking inventory and arranging the ingredients in the stock room.

"Nope."

"Drugs, then?"

"Still no. You're really not letting up, are you? I haven't been subtle with how few words I want to use today."

He doesn't turn from his can counting. "You saved my son a lot of money and hardship. I consider you a friend."

"Then as a friend, you first. Why do you work here?"

"Used to be a deadbeat, and I came here all the time. Ex-wife had custody, then she got sick. That was five years ago. I had to support my kid, and the last manager here was on his way out. I'm just trying to do what's right, since I've done a lot of what's wrong." He moves from the cans, now noting expiration dates on the cardboard boxes of dry food. "Your turn."

I close my eyes for a moment. Kapil's probably safe. If not, I have options. "It's a pretty ridiculous story, and I know I'm going to hate explaining myself over and over throughout it. If you interrupt, even once, I'm stopping and not continuing."

"Very reasonable. Please, go ahead."

"I used to work an office job, for about five years or so. About three weeks ago or so, I joined the magic police. Two weeks in, and I'm sent to the front lines of a drug bust gone bad. I got shot in the head, and my brain got mulched. I'm not a sorcerer, though, I'm a magical beast. My body is a shell covering around the actual me, a small black orb of unknown composition and origin. I'm currently embedded in the thigh of this shell. I can make things, but they project from me and not my shell, so I cut a hole in my pocket to product things relatively discretely. More discrete than a mysterious black orb in my palm, at least."

Kapil moves on to the produce. "A good story, I admit. A shame you don't want to say, but I understand. One last prying question, is your actual background related to your facial paralysis?"

I tap him on the shoulder, to which he turns his head over his shoulder. I smile, then frown, then raise an eyebrow.

There's a brief pause before he goes back to checking the vegetables. "If you can smile and frown, why don't you?"

"My shell's facial movements don't instinctively react to my emotions. I've been trying to create a workaround for a while now, but I can't get the brain to reflects emotion automatically. Since my emotions aren't controlled by hormonal changes, there's a gap between what I'm feeling and how my shell reacts. It's like trying to teach a computer to play football. Here, watch."

He marks off a final box on his clipboard as he turns around. I set down the final insulin cartridge, and briefly retract my body into my core, before extending it once again.

I watch his clipboard fall to the ground, his eyes wide.

That wasn't the reaction I was hoping for. No problem, I can guilt him into silence. "Don't call MBR. People still need insulin, right? You don't want to be the one who takes that away from people. Plus, I heard those allergy epinephrine pens have gotten expensive. Can you get me one of those next?"

He doesn't say a word, or even move his head. He just keeps looking at me as if I were a monster. I suppose it's an accurate description, but it's still a bit hurtful. I take out my journal, and make a quick addendum to #13, adding 'It also hurts slightly when someone rejects my real self.' to the side, next to Mirka's doodle.

I reach down and pick up his clipboard, handing it to him. That seems to break him from his shock, making him instead start to back away, holding up the clipboard like a shield.

"Kapil, you just said I was your friend. You're really gonna be a dick to the person making free insulin and hormone supplements? Why do you always assume the worst about me? So I'm actually a magical beast, who gives a shit?"

He slowly lowers the clipboard, eyes fixed on my shell's. "Sorry. Really. I wasn't expecting that. You startled me, and I saw my friend get turned into gore while being sucked into a black hole. Not... not what I expected."

"It's fine. Seriously though, don't call MBR."

"I won't. You're not the only magical beast who comes here, even. There's another, but he specifically told me not to tell anyone who he is."

I go back producing insulin. "Thanks for that."

"One thing, I'm not sure how literally you meant the analogy, but you can teach a computer to play football. Just have the computer tell a person or robot what to do." He smiles weakly, setting aside the clipboard for the day.

An intermediary? That could work, but I don't really have any measurable changes to my core tied to emotion, as far as I know. Maybe I could repurpose nociceptors? I'd have to do some major remodeling. It might be easier to build a secondary brain close to my core just for that.

Kapil pulls me back from my mind. "I can tell you're lost in thought. Funny how a second pair of eyes can make things so much simpler."

"I'll be damned, I think you're on to something. I've been overthinking this. If I can link one of my precursory feeding appendages into my body, they might... never mind. I'll spare you the gory details."

"I appreciate it. Want me to tell the other magical beast about you? He might change his mind."

"No... I'd prefer not to. And don't tell him I'm around either." I put down the tenth insulin cartridge. "I need to get more silicon. I'll see you tomorrow, Kapil."

"Have a nice night." He turns back to his work.

I take the opportunity to exit. In truth, I have more than enough silicon, but I want to get started on modifying my shell. It's the obvious solution, in hindsight, though I can't seem to be annoyed by it.