42
Thursday Evening, January 27th, 2011
Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet
Brockton Bay General Hospital
Rote, she spoke the words. "May I heal you?"
The man's pained consent, like countless others, made no real impression. He relaxed when she directed the nerves around his shattered tibia to cease transmitting pain signals. Then she began a thousand tasks at once with the easy focus that her power always granted.
She directed muscles to contract and areas of soft tissue to swell just so, all in order to push the shards of bone back together in their original shape. With the shards held in place she stimulated osteoblasts to lay new bone along the fracture planes, the symphony of their cellular chemistry directed by her power, accelerated to an incredible rate. On the scale of capillaries blood flowed like a raging torrent to supply sugars, cellular feedstock, and carry away the waste heat and metabolic waste.
As the bone knitted she forced the damaged soft tissues through accelerated cycles of mitosis, each new cell taking its place in the interconnecting structures that made up a body. Blood vessels, muscles, and more.
When she returned her attention to what her eyes could see, the man's leg, crushed in a car accident, had become whole again.
He said something grateful‐sounding, she didn't pay it any attention. The nurse followed her as she walked out of the ER.
"What's next?" Amy asked.
The nurse – Andrew something, Amy recalled – tucked the clipboard under an arm. "You've been going since you got out of school. Maybe you should call your sister so you can get home for dinner?"
"Carol should never have taken you in. She was not psychologically prepared for it. But that is not your fault, Amy."
She didn't want to go home.
"I'll…just grab something downstairs and take a break," Amy said.
She didn't miss the nurse's frown. "If you're sure. I'll be at the ER station when you're ready. Take your time."
"Yeah…" Amy muttered, and her steps took her away.
It'd been three days since the girl with the thing in her brain had cornered her in an Arcadia classroom. Three days since she'd said things that Amy couldn't stop thinking about.
"You've had the passing thought of how easy it would be, haven't you? To change her."
She had said she was a time traveler. It was absurd. But how did she know? Nobody knew. Nobody could know.
"You're a good person, and you deserve help."
The girl knew and she didn't hate her.
"It's the aura. Not you."
She hated herself, just like Carol hated her. And no amount of healing others ever made either of those things better. She just hated that, too. And hated herself more for hating it. A good person wouldn't hate helping people.
"You're a good person, and you deserve help."
But the girl disagreed. Was she right to?
It had seemed like she could be, at the end of their conversation. She'd given Amy hope, hope that things weren't her fault, that they could get better. Hope that she wasn't a bad person. But the thoughts that had been circling through her head for so long hadn't gone away with the arrival of hope.
"You're a good person, and you deserve help."
Did she deserve to be helped?
Maybe it didn't matter if she did. What if the girl was right about Vicky? She'd known something she couldn't have known about Amy. If she knew the future and it wasn't a lie… Vicky didn't deserve what Amy could do to her.
Amy's stomach rebelled as unwanted imaginings assailed her mind, and she had to swallow sour bile and blink back tears.
Amy wasn't sure if the girl was right about anything. Hope and doubt and fear swirled in her gut and in her mind, and all she really knew was that she wasn't alright, and most of all, that she was afraid.
Her hands were shaking.
"Panacea?" asked a woman's voice with a note of surprise.
Amy's head jerked up from where she'd been staring at her feet. She was standing by an open door to one of the small private offices for senior attending physicians on the administrative floors.
Dr. Mary Ruiz, Chief of Psychiatry, according to the placard by the door.
"It's always nice to see you, but what brings you to my door at this hour?" Doctor Ruiz asked.
How had she ended up here without even noticing? She'd been thinking about it for the last three days, but how had she not noticed?
"I… um…" Amy reached for a lie, but none came to mind, and her voice was unsteady besides.
The doctor stood from the chair at her desk and stepped closer. A look that had been one of surprise and curiosity changed into something else. Something focused.
"Come in," she said after a moment, and stepped aside. "Take my chair. It's very comfortable."
Amy's heart pounded in her ears and she wanted to run. But she was too conflicted to do anything but let herself be led gently to the chair.
It was comfortable, she thought traitorously as she sank into it.
Doctor Ruiz pulled a tissue from a box to the side of her desk and handed it to Amy. "Here," she said.
Amy took it and wiped her eyes. Was she really crying in front of someone else for the second time this week?
"Please, what's the matter?" Doctor Ruiz asked.
A hundred thoughts spun through Amy's mind. Doctor Ruiz was one of the local experts who certified her and her power as safe for healing. She'd been disappointed that Amy couldn't help psychiatric patients, but she'd certified that patients didn't seem to be mentally affected by her healing.
"I lied when I said I couldn't do brains," Amy said, not sure why those words came out first, but the guilt behind them hurt. "I'm sorry."
When Doctor Ruiz closed the door, Amy expected her to be angry.
Instead she sat in a spare chair by the door and spoke gently. "Why did you do that?" she asked.
Amy found honesty easier with one lie revealed.
"I didn't want to be a monster that changed who people were, so I let them suffer and die instead. I really am a monster."
"Oh, child," Mary whispered, and paused a moment before she spoke with her normal voice. "I don't think you're a monster, Amy. Just someone trying to do their best to carry a terrible weight, one much heavier than anyone should have to carry."
"But I might have saved them!" Amy said, and it came out louder than she meant, but Doctor Ruiz didn't react.
"Maybe. But if you feared changing people, as you put it, then maybe holding off was the right thing to do. I have to weigh the risks of recommending medications every day. Some of them can do a lot more harm than good. Oftentimes the right thing to do isn't everything we possibly can. That doesn't make you a monster, Amy. Unless you think I'm a monster. Do you?"
"No," Amy said.
Mary smiled. "So why not give yourself the same credit?"
"There's a lot more," she whispered with dread.
Friday, February 11th, 2011
Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet
Brockton Bay General Hospital
"Amy?" Mary asked.
Amy's head jolted back in Mary's direction. "Sorry, lost in thought."
"That's quite alright," the Doctor said. "I asked how things have been going at home."
"...Carol is still Carol," Amy said, only somewhat bitter. "Vicky says she'll be getting better about not using her aura, though. She said a… tinker made something for her to remind her when she's using it. I'm not sure if it's helping or not."
"It hasn't been very long," Mary answered. "These things can take a lot of time."
Amy bit her lip and said nothing, worried that it would never get better.
"What were you thinking about a moment ago?" Mary asked.
"What if I told you that you could save millions of lives without having to spend all your time healing?"
"I…" Amy paused, not sure if she dared start down this road, lest the doctor figure out where it led.
"It's okay, Amy," Mary reassured.
Amy sighed. "You saw the news, I assume."
"About the CUI?" Mary asked.
Amy took a breath. In and out. It helped. "Yes. I… was thinking about whether Scientia was right to do that. Carol was furious, she was shouting about it all through dinner. She thinks heroes need to regulate themselves, or we become villains."
"What do you think?" Mary asked.
"There are a whole lot of lives to be saved, a crumbling world to be rebuilt and improved."
"The CUI was evil. They hurt millions and millions of people. Is stopping that really wrong?" Amy asked.
Mary didn't answer, so Amy continued.
"I think… Carol wants power to be held accountable because of things that happened to her, and maybe because of things she's done. She's fixated on it. So much that it's blinded her to the whole point of being a hero. We're supposed to be helping people, and Vicky and I are the only ones in the family that help anyone regularly, anymore. I think Carol's so scarred by the terrible things she's seen villains do that she can't think about people using their powers to do good except in ways so small they aren't threatening."
"You may be right," Mary said after a pause. "Of course, Carol's not my patient. We're here to help you. It sounds like the news has you thinking about how you want your family to do more?"
"What if I told you that you could save millions of lives without having to spend all your time healing?"
"Yes," Amy lied. It wasn't her family she was thinking about at all. It was the things that girl had told her. She couldn't stop thinking about them.
"Beyond medicine there's all sorts of stuff you can do, like make bacteria that create plastic without any need for fossil fuels, or that desalinate water, or that repair concrete, or help with manufacturing, or do any of a million useful things."
Amy wanted to help, but healing people one at a time was wearing on her, and it was never going to fix any of the big problems. Amy used to think that the big things couldn't be solved, but Scientia had just… swooped in and overthrown an empire. Almost as easily as she'd ended the Nine, when it seemed like nobody would be able to do that, either.
Did she dare cross this line? Would it be right?
What would she become?
"You're a good person, Amy," said the Doctor, and Amy almost jerked in her seat to hear the echo of what the girl had said.
"Are you sure?" Amy asked, voice quiet, almost desperately.
"I am," Mary said. "The facts are that you keep healing people, and that you want people to be helped more. And yet you're worried enough about the ways helping can go wrong that you're asking me for my opinion. I don't know if anyone has a clear answer to these sorts of questions, but the fact that you're worried enough to ask tells me that you're a good person who isn't likely to lose her way. Scientia made a judgment call when she decided to end the CUI, and only time will tell whether she made the right one. You made a judgment call when you decided not to alter brains, and that may well have been wise. It might be impossible to say. We all just do our best, Amy."
Amy took a breath. In, and out.
"Thank you," she said.
"It's what I'm here for, Amy," Mary answered.
On the roof, Amy stared at the contacts list in her phone. Above Vicky was the name Trifle. An independent tinker from the West Coast. Amy had once patched her back together after a Behemoth attack, and Trifle had told her then she owed her a favor, no questions asked. Amy brushed her off, but the number appeared on her contacts list on its own. And every time she deleted it, it came back.
Tinkers, she thought, with some annoyance.
She knew she should call Vicky to take her home, but somehow Amy's finger pressed Trifle instead.
It picked up instantly, followed by Trifle's flamboyant and unmistakable voice. "Panacea! Are you in trouble? Say 'banana' and I'll bring the wrath of God down on the bastards."
"What?" Amy said, confused.
"No trouble then? Color me surprised. You worried me there, it's been so long I didn't think you'd call unless you were kidnapped or something. But I guess you'd probably call your folks if that happened. Hmm. So what does have you calling me? Whatever it is, your favor's still good. I keep my promises, and you're a good kid. I'd probably still be extra crispy without you. Be pretty poor form for me not to lend a hand after that."
Amy took a breath. In, and out. It helped her resist the urge to mutter something unflattering about the sanity of tinkers.
"I… don't know if it's possible, but I need a way to do some traveling. There are some things I need to do, outside the country, and I want to be there and gone before anyone notices," Amy explained. "If you can't, it's totally okay, I understand–"
"I can," Trifle said, and made a sound like she was sucking air through her teeth. "Now?"
She was due home soon. Vicky would notice if Amy didn't call her.
"No! No. What about… tonight, at one in the morning? Unless that's too soon?"
Everyone should be asleep then.
"Ahh, stealth mission. I gotcha. Sure thing, not too soon at all. Keep your phone with you, and know where you want to go. I gotta go make arrangements."
The phone clicked, leaving Amy to stare at it.
Well, there was no going back now.
Saturday, February 12th, 2011
Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet
Dallon Residence
Amy stepped lightly through the unlit house in dark, baggy clothes, carefully avoiding the stairs that creaked. Opening and closing the front door ever so quietly, she made her way to the street.
When her phone read 1:01 A.M. she considered calling Trifle, unsure how the woman was going to find her or what she had planned. Then she heard a crack and a rush of air behind her and spun, heart hammering.
She caught a glimpse of two figures in the dark. One in light, bright pink armor covered in pockets holding odd tools and what might be grenades, a matching full helmet, and some sort of tinkertech rifle. The other figure wore a blue and black uniform with a matching cap.
"That's her," said the figure in armor. Amy recognized Trifle's voice, and then she was blinking as the three of them were in a forest somewhere in full daylight.
The front of Trifle's helmet hinged up to expose her face. "Panacea! Right on time." She let the rifle – definitely tinkertech, maybe some sort of laser gun – hang from the sling harness on her chest over her armor, and tapped a few buttons inset on her armor's left vambrace.
"Okay, mission clock's going. This is Strider, I believe you two have met," she said, waving to the man in blue and black who wore goggles in lieu of a mask.
He yawned, and nodded politely. "Panacea. Good to meet you, I'm sorry we never really got a chance to talk. Always too busy when… well, you know. Where can I take you tonight?"
Strider, she thought, stunned. Strider might be the best mass teleporter in the world. He did a lot of the transportation to and from Endbringer attacks, and sometimes he transported injured heroes that the PRT wanted her to help. Amy knew that Strider hired out his services most of the time, but she had no idea how much he cost. She'd wager it was something completely absurd.
Especially in the middle of the night.
She swallowed nervously. "I uh, I didn't realize that Trifle was going to ask you to help. I don't have a lot of money–"
Trifle rolled her eyes. "Sweetie, this is a favor, remember? It'd be a real shitty favor if I sent you a bill. I'm covering it. And I'm tagging along to keep the two of you safe, just in case," she said, affectionately stroking her rifle in a way that was almost loving, and slightly unsettling.
"Okay, um." Amy lifted her phone and swiped through menus to the list of GPS coordinates she'd looked up ahead of time, then pulled the first up on Dragon Maps and showed it to Strider. "Will this work?" she asked.
"Yeah, but Africa?" he said, a bit puzzled. "Dangerous. What do you want there?"
"To help," Amy said.
He shrugged and yawned again, and Amy had to resist the urge to echo it. "Well, you're the boss. Here we go…"
Sunday, February 13th, 2011
Ethiopia, Earth Bet
Amy stuck her arm deep in the waters of the seventh stagnant pond of the trip, stinking with rotting plant matter. DNA reconfigured and methylated under her guidance, her concentration total. She changed every one of thousands of mosquito eggs that touched her arm, and even the few adult mosquitos that tried to land on her. Those she paralyzed instantly and changed before triggering their instinctual need to fly from a threat.
She only had to think about what she wanted to do in general terms, and somehow saw the changes she needed to make as though they were obvious missing pieces in a broken machine. Her power guided her to alter the mosquitos' immune systems. By removing vulnerabilities in their immune responses they would no longer be hospitable hosts for the malaria parasite, or dengue fever, or West Nile virus, or any of the other infectious diseases that collectively resulted in hundreds of millions of infections every year and millions of deaths, with untold human suffering.
Could she make it so they wouldn't bite people? Their instincts were crude things, but… yes, she could make them afraid of large animals. The females needed a blood meal from somewhere for the iron and trace minerals needed to produce eggs, but they could get that from rodents and other animals far smaller than humans. Her power showed her that she could modify feeding instincts and mouth parts so that they got iron from non‐heme sources, like plants or yeast or dead insects, but that would be remaking them into another kind of fly. They'd be competing with other species for the same food sources, and she wasn't sure what that would do to the ecosystem. No, eliminating the diseases that currently existed and discouraging them from biting people at all would have to do. Hopefully that would be enough to prevent future disease from evolving around her changes to exploit the same niche.
Around her changes to the mosquitos' DNA, her power guided her to make additional changes that would ensure the altered sections of DNA spread to all of the mosquitos' offspring. And all of their offspring, and so on, until they spread through the entire population in a few years. A gene drive. A few other sections of DNA needed to be altered as well with redundant mechanisms to ensure that it would take multiple independent mutations in the same individual to develop resistance to her changes.
She could have spread a gene for sterility instead, and eradicated the entire species. It would have been easier, but she wasn't sure what the effects of annihilating mosquitos entirely would be on all the species that ate them and other bugs. This was safer. And less obvious, although people would start to notice before too long when human infection rates crashed in a dozen mosquito generations.
"That should be enough for Africa," Amy said, withdrawing her arm and shaking off the water. The bacterial scum she killed without more than a stray though, cells lysing in biological suicide to become little more than dirty water.
She felt almost lightheaded. Giddy. Was it just that she was breaking the rules and doing things she shouldn't be doing? Vicky would get like that when she snuck out.
It didn't matter, Amy decided.
"Good," said Strider, swatting away mosquitos. "I don't really get what you're doing, but I'm glad to be gone. Where next?"
"More ponds and marshes in South America and Southeast Asia, then some other things. Here's the next one," she said, bringing up the pinned location on a satellite map on her phone for him.
Strider sighed, and the three of them were gone.
Sunday, February 13th, 2011
Tamil Nadu India, Earth Bet
It was early morning as Strider's face twisted in disgust when Amy plunged her hand into an open flow of sewage running through a ditch in a rural village. The few passersby in the fading light of the evening gave them a wide berth, their eyes on Trifle's rifle and armor as she stood guard.
"Why here?" Strider asked.
"Cholera outbreak," Amy said, concentrating. The bacteria were easy to find in the filth; she thought about how she wanted to make them harmless and make the harmless variant replace their deadly progenitors. Her power leapt to her aid, showing her how to alter the bacteria so that it would no longer produce the toxin that caused the human body to react with potentially fatal diarrhea.
"Your power can stop that from here?" he asked.
"Yes," Amy answered, distractedly. It was showing her how to ensure that the bacteria would share the changes with others when they exchanged plasmids, and ignore offered plasmids in return. When she implemented that change, it showed her a kind of generational countdown clock that would cut off a DNA base pair in a long sequence every generation until, after a great many generations had passed for the changed variant to replace the dangerous original, a critical gene was broken and the bacteria could no longer reproduce, and would go extinct.
Amy wasn't sure about the ecological effects of exterminating whole species of mosquito, but she felt confident the world could survive without cholera, so she added that change too.
She straightened up, smiling. "Australia, now."
Sunday, February 13th, 2011
Queensland Australia, Earth Bet
Green Island
They appeared on a white sand beach, just visible at first under the light of the moon and distant lights on the small island's only pier. Trifle touched something on her vambrace and a ring of light around her helmet lit up brightly enough for the three of them to see their footing.
"What's here?" Trifle asked.
Amy walked towards the ocean waves lapping away at the beach, the constant sound competing with the chirping of insects in the forest behind them.
"This island is a bit of the Great Barrier Reef that sticks up above the water," Amy said. "The reef is all around us, no need for a boat to reach it."
The waves were too large for her to keep her arm in them properly without getting soaked, so Amy gave up on the idea of staying dry and walked into the warm water.
"Panacea!" Trifle said, running steps taking her close, but stopping at the water's edge. "What are you doing?"
"The world's reefs have been dying for decades," Amy said, the water up to her waist. "Ocean acidification from global warming." She raised a foot so she could pry off one soaked shoe after another and transferred them to her hands, and walked out further. She just needed to get past the sand.
"Panacea!" Strider shouted after her.
"It's okay, I won't go out far," she reassured them. A few more steps and her right foot touched the hard surface of a coral, and its biology opened up to her.
She thought about wanting it to be immune to bleaching, and her power showed her how to make the modifications that would be needed for them to construct more acid resistant structures for themselves. But it would only affect the one coral she was touching; it'd reproduce and a gene drive could spread the trait to the whole species, but with the long lifespans of corals it would be slow, too slow, and it wouldn't help all the other species unless she modified them too. And there had to be thousands of coral species.
Maybe if she were here during the times the various corals released their spores, she could modify enough of them to make a difference, like she'd done with the mosquito eggs. But even that wouldn't save the existing corals, and those were slow to grow and die and be replaced. It wouldn't work in anything like a reasonable amount of time to save the existing reefs.
How could she fix it?
A sudden memory occurred to her with unusual clarity. Her chemistry teacher last year, talking about buffered solutions. Add some acid and a conjugate base to a solution and it would resist PH changes.
But why was that coming to mind…?
Countless green algae, cyanobacteria, and even a leaf of seaweed brushing her leg lit up in her ever present awareness of all the biological matter touching her skin. Things with chloroplasts.
Inside she could see the cellular machinery that waited for light so that it could turn carbon dioxide and water into the stored sugars that fueled everything.
Of course. She wouldn't have to make all the corals resistant to carbon dioxide acidification if she just reduced the amount of carbon dioxide in the water to where it was supposed to be and kept it there.
The oceans absorbed the carbon dioxide from the air, so if she could pull it out of the ocean, by extension that would also pull it out of the air.
But the ocean was already full of things that photosynthesized. How could she do enough?
Parts of the biology stood out, drawing her attention. Weaknesses. Things that were vulnerable to increased temperature and acidity. She realized that the amount of living algae would have been decreasing as the oceans became more hostile.
Then she began to see changes. Additional enzymes and changes to the cell membrane that would help the modified organisms survive and thrive in wider acidity and temperature ranges. A completely redesigned artificial photosynthesis chain, far more efficient than the natural one. A metabolic pathway that turned excess organic carbon into calcium carbonate, which the algae could expel to fall to the ocean floor and be stored as a slowly accreting layer of limestone.
The ideas started to come faster, everything brushing against her skin prompting another.
A metabolic switch like a high and low gear, that would send the affected species into frantic metabolic and reproductive overdrive to reduce carbon levels whenever they were too high, but only maintain a modest population when it was reduced back to normal, waiting until they were needed again.
A multitude of species working in concert, with further adaptations to cover different parts of the world and of the water column, all at different temperatures and light levels. Endless shoals of biological machines that would reverse the damage done by industrialization and preserve the world's oceans and atmosphere.
They would need more calcium than the water held to bond to all the carbon, but she saw a way to alter microbes into efficient metabolizers of exposed calcium‐bearing gypsum deposits. She could add on more microbes that stripped metal oxides from rocks, and bond them with carbon dioxide to add to limestone formation.
Amy thought about the other gasses that contributed to global warming, like methane, and saw how to make microbes that could break them down into limestone and water.
A fix for global warming and the impending mass extinction of much of the life in the world's oceans beckoned. She need only will it into being.
So she did.
In a timeless moment of comforting unity every living thing that touched her skin was changed. Her focus seemed to encompass them all with perfect attention, making the correct changes and locking them in with mechanisms to prevent drift, balancing the whole complex ecosystem she was creating. Engineering.
She had no idea how much time had passed when suddenly arms were wrapping around her middle and hauling her upwards.
She was under water, her arms spread out. How had that happened?
The strong, armored arms hauled her to the surface and she took a deep gasp of air, not having realized how badly she'd needed to breathe. The person manhandling her hauled her back to the beach and laid her down on the sand. They took off their helmet, tossed it aside, and were being very loud for some reason Amy didn't quite follow. Another person made noises, the person standing over her made some noises in return, and then raised an arm and slapped her across the face.
"You hit me!" Amy protested, a hand coming up to her burning cheek. Trifle. It was Trifle over her, looking down with her face exposed and an extremely worried expression.
"Yes, I did. Panacea, where are you?" she asked.
Amy's thoughts started to return in something like a reasonable order. "Australia?" she asked. "I was… I was fixing things. Oh god, what happened?" She tried to sit up, and Trifle firmly pressed her shoulder back down.
"If I didn't know better I would say you just had a tinker fugue," Trifle said, frowning deeply. "A bad one. What's going on?"
Amy's heart raced as she realized just how out of hand things had gotten. "I think I just fixed global warming. Oh god. Oh god. Carol is going to kill me. Oh god. She's seriously going to kill me."
Trifle clamped a hand on her shoulder. "Your mother isn't going to kill you. Hell, I'm not going to tell her anything. But I'm worried about you right now. What happened?"
Amy felt like the darkness was closing in. "I… wanted to help, but I think I got carried away. I was just going to fix the coral at first but that wasn't going to work so I did something else and it was all so, so easy. Oh god."
"Panic attack," Strider said to Trifle, who shot him a look before turning back to Amy.
"Take deep breaths for me. I think we've done enough for tonight. We'll get you in some dry clothes and get you home," she said.
"I… I haven't gotten to all the pests on my list yet." She pulled her phone out of her pocket, her panic shifting from Carol's apocalyptic reaction to worry about her phone. How had she walked into the sea with her phone in her pocket?
To her relief the screen lit up when she touched it still.
"Don't worry about that," Trifle said, her voice soothing. "Why don't you tell me about what you've done so far?"
Amy thought back, her thoughts sluggish like she had just woken up. "I changed mosquitos so they won't bite people or carry diseases anymore. It'll take a year or two for the changes to propagate through most of the population. Then I fixed a few epidemics by changing cholera so it wouldn't create toxins anymore. That'll propagate a lot faster. Then…"
She swallowed. "Then I… changed algae and some other things so that they'll fix ocean acidification and regulate the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. They'll turn the excess into limestone, to stop global warming."
Strider and Trifle shared a look. "She's definitely not just a healer," he said.
"Not a word to anyone," Trifle replied, inclining her head with a warning look.
Strider sighed. "Client confidentiality. Still, who knows what she just did. Can it be reversed?"
Amy looked out at the lapping surf, where the endless motion of the water would already be carrying the modified organisms out to sea. Ocean currents would carry them far and wide. In a few years her engineered carbon sequestration and buffering ecosystem would be well established everywhere on Earth.
She'd have to engineer organisms that spread equally wide to stop it. Her power started giving her ideas, but she would have to introduce a second artificial ecosystem just to stop the first.
"Not really," Amy said.
The surf pounded the shore, and all three were silent for a long moment.
"Here's what we'll do," said Trifle. "You're soaked, so we'll get you home and dry before anyone knows you're gone. Then tomorrow you'll call me and I'll be your new tinker mentor. Because you might not be a tinker, but this is close enough that I think you'd benefit from someone to talk to about it."
"What is there to talk about? I went way, way too far," Amy said. "I… I can't do this again. This was wrong, and I shouldn't have come."
"Stop," Trifle said. "You might also have saved who knows how many people. I'll talk to some people, get some tests done. That'll be the first thing we do together, we'll verify whether the changes you made will do what you intended, and if they'll have any second order effects. Wouldn't you like to know?"
"Yeah, I would," she said, sighing and trying to suppress the feeling of impending doom. "Do you know anyone like that?" Amy asked.
Trifle smiled. "Academia is a small world. We can get referrals through the grapevine to the right people. You could probably do it without me, but I'll lend a hand. It'll be alright."
Amy took a breath. "Okay, I'd like to get in some dry clothes."
"Dry clothes first. Then we change the world," Trifle agreed with a nod.
So, good news, I passed the patent bar exam. (Hooray!)
I feel like this chapter wasn't my best work ever, but it's important to get back to things. I hope you guys enjoyed this one.
I can't promise that we're back to regular updates, though. I'm moving this weekend and law school orientation stuff starts a week after that, and law school probably absolutely devours all the time it can get. I'm hoping to keep writing as stress relief, but I don't know what my mental state will be like or if I'll be able to manage it often.
I'm not giving up on the story. I do have 80% of the next chapter written, and the rest of the story's major plot points outlined.