Katie looked genuinely shocked. “What? How’s that possible? I have SEEN your suits. Anyone would pay millions for them! And your other toys, too. Haven’t you gotten any incentives from the BSA or corporate interests? Those aren’t illegal, since we aren’t exactly college athletes.”

  I shook my head, leading the way out. “I am sort of a ghost in the machine. A high-risk asset. I don’t even know about any corporate offers, though I was thinking of creating a low-end suit and selling it as a cheaper alternative to Atlas Threading. That’s why I need Quietcode’s help… I want to patent a version with built-in communications and a heads-up display, and maybe even database linking if she can figure out how to send digital signals through the quantum link. I figured I could turn out about five suits a day, and hook up city emergency workers with them for a modest fee.”

  “And you call yourself an asshole?” she asked, a smile playing on her lips.

  I laughed, “Opinionated, overbearing asshole, actually. It’s an important distinction. Part of it was how I was raised—money is a tool, not a goal—and part of it is just experience. I could give away the suits for free, I mean, they need them, but then I’d have no money, and they’d get a shitty alpha version that they could reverse-engineer easily. I’m not running a charity; I’m trying to build a fortress.”

  “I probably will make a budget version for the hunters. Like emergency workers, hunters are worthy of respect. But for ordinary superheroes? Fuck ‘em. I’ll happily support their popularity, but I will also charge every single penny the market will bear. If I can charge MORE than Atlas Threading, because my suits have advantages Morita’s doesn’t, I will do that too… but as of this moment, I am an arrogant starving artist convinced that the world doesn’t appreciate his genius,” I grinned, “Without enough juju to take a girl on a date. The tragedy is palpable.”

  Katie was looking very thoughtful. “I have an idea.”

  “What’s that? A bake sale? I’m not above it.”

  “Sell me some masks.”

  “Huh?”

  She held up the mask. “We have already tested these. They have a decent comm link in them. I was breathing nice cool air the whole time, and they never heated up. It’s not your armor, but it’s a hell of a proof of concept. Also, have you checked with your student advisor?”

  “No?” I said, my brain catching up. “Wait, sell you a mask? You’d… pay for this?”

  She sighed, the sound of someone explaining basic economics to a caveman. “When you were first entered into the school system, did you request anonymity?”

  I nodded. “I figured it was best. It didn’t work out very well, though, since apparently Adrian Maxwell figured out some of my power and decided that owning me was a lot easier than buying a suit. I don’t exactly have a student advisor, though. Frostweaver is my sponsor, and Subvector’s my liaison.”

  She nodded, “So, talk to Frostweaver about selling me a couple of linked masks. I could take one to Quietcode, that might reassure her a little—a working product from the mysterious Blueprint. If it works out, you might be able to go into a collaboration with her and let her agent pass them on to emergency services, or we might use them ourselves. It’s a start. A… small business venture.”

  I sighed. The idea was so simple, it was brilliant. Or so simple I was an idiot for not thinking of it. “Or I could just sell your team suits instead of doing the bet again. I just didn’t want to do that without getting some basic software installed, especially if any of you want to use the muscular or targeting systems. I’m not handing over a loaded weapon with no safety.”

  “So your suits… they aren’t tinker tech?” she asked, her voice hopeful. “I mean, they are real, and won’t stop working if you get overloaded or something?”

  I shook my head as we started walking back towards the dorms. “Nope, I don’t have any tinker powers. It’s all real, reproducible physics, assuming you have a matter manipulator and a brain that can visualize quantum states. Until I figure out a way to make a manufacturing chain without worrying about Skynet or gray ooze, I have to make everything personally. I’m a one-man sweatshop with better benefits.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Skynet? Gray Oooze?”

  I chuckled, “Science fiction. Fears of a rogue AI that gains sapience and tries to take over the world, or self-replicating microscopic robots that consume everything. Standard pre-Alpha paranoia.”

  Katie looked thoughtful, “I am not sure those are possible.”

  I shrugged, “With magic, anything is possible, but traditionally? Nope. Skynet is certainly possible, but someone would have to actually program a worldwide computer system to try to take over the world, or goof up their programming badly with a stupid loophole. Digital sapience, as sci-fi people assume, is impossible because digital memory, by its very nature, is unforgiving of being associative instead of direct. With magic, I mean, it’s possible. Some of the weirder magical types can make a toaster sapient. It’s usually a dick.”

  Katie nodded, “And gray ooze?”

  I chuckled, “You would have to craft some kind of microscopic robots that had the ability to move and process on a microscopic scale. I could try, but I’d have to build a processing center to control them via individual and custom-coded digital entanglement for each and every single one. It’s a logistical nightmare.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “That means, for me at least, I’d need to create a big friggin’ machine to craft them, and then another big friggin’ machine to control them, and it would be a strictly limited number… and I’d need someone capable of simultaneously coding trillions of hefty, if small processors JUST for the fabrication step. THEN I would need to find a way to allow each of the processors to manipulate a single element exactly the same way that my power does. At the end of that process, you’d be left with a giant machine that you could dump trash into one end, and out of the other end comes a full set of armor.”

  I thought about it. “Or, to be fair, just about anything you want, but it would take a lot longer than it would take me. Probably. It’s the least efficient super-weapon ever conceived.”

  “Can you do that?”

  I shook my head at her, “No. Number one, I cannot handle the programming, and number two, I have zero idea of how to allow a single microscopic machine to exert quantum telekinesis, let alone tens of trillions of them. My power is me. It’s not something I can just… bottle.”

  “Observation,” Sabrina said quietly, breaking her silence since the training session.

  “Huh?” Katie and I said in unison.

  “Observation. That’s how your power works, Jacob,” Sabrina elaborated as we reached the dorm block and rode the elevator up. “When you observe things on a quantum scale, your own brain applies pressure to them. That is true of everything that’s mentally capable of observing. In your case, when you observe trillions of molecules at the exact same time, the combined force is enough to alter those atoms along the lines of your affinity, which is momentum.”

  I nodded slowly, “Which is why I have to use essence to fuel that observation. So the more essence I can bring to bear, the more objects are being personally observed, and the greater the scale I can make changes.”

  She nodded, “I don’t understand the science outside of alchemy, but it sounds a bit like creating a homunculus.”

  We were back on our floor, and Katie waved goodbye, heading to own team's room. “Explain?” I asked Sabrina.

  Sabrina nodded, following me to my door. “Alchemy isn’t just mixing chemicals together to create an effect. That’s chemistry. Alchemy involves mixing your essence into the concoction to unlock potential essence effects based on a huge number of factors.”

  “Homunculi are a bit like golems, except that golems are firmly within the realm of the spellcasters. They use magical runes attached to a frame, each of which gathers or channels essence, all tied to a sort of core called a golem core, which receives and interprets programming a bit like a computer.”

  I nodded, “I have heard of golems. The Red Rabbi used to use them a lot to stop crimes, and then eventually to commit them after exposure to the elders drove him nuts. Nasty business.”

  She nodded, “Well, homunculi are sort of like those, except a chemical version. Alchemists don’t use them to fight people; we mostly use them to observe chemical reactions on a very small scale. They are able to do that innately, and generally have just enough sentience to transfer essence, make observations, and use commands that help moderate or control chemical and alchemical reactions.”

  “How? Can you make one of those?” The idea was fascinating. A programmable, essence-based nanite swarm. It was everything I’d just said was impossible, but through a magical lens.

  She laughed, “If I could do that, I wouldn’t still be at the body purification stage. Creating your first homunculus is pretty much the step where an alchemist has proved that they have entered the first true core stage, because it requires a core to create an artificial observer. It is a milestone. My teacher's cauldron was a humonculus.”

  I smiled as she walked into her own room across the hall. “But I already have a core. Two, even.”

  She shook her head, pausing at her doorway. “No, none of you have true cores. Not by the standards of my homeworld. You have monster cores. That’s probably why the Serenoids freaked and attacked when the Alphas showed up… the pure cultivators were suddenly confronted with dozens or hundreds of spirit beast monsters wearing human shapes. To them, you are all walking, talking abominations. Very powerful, very dangerous abominations.”

  She closed her door, leaving me standing in the hall with that cheerful little thought. Just another day at Kellar Academy.