[1] Higitus Figitus, DMA

[Will Stanton]

"And I guess there's no such thing as mutant standard. So this'll probably work just fine. Probably," Will grinned, as they stepped back inside the point. "You take your tea with anything, usually?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Milk and just a dash of honey."

[Will Stanton]

"Can do," Will nodded. "Just sit down and make yourself comfortable while I work..."

And work he did. Will donned some goggles -- a bit late for that, considering he was poking at the stuff a few minutes prior -- and carefully spooned out some of the resin into a mug. The tea brewing process was standard enough -- Will was apparently a loose-leaf guy rather than a tea bag man, at least when it came to this -- but he was very careful with adding a bit of the resin at a time, letting it dissolve fully before spooning in the next bit. He watched it like a hawk as it steeped - a level of precision and focus that one might not normally attribute to Will Stanton, or at least this Will Stanton. But carefully he worked, until he was satisfied, and handed the mug over to Ashlie, picking up a clipboard as he did so.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie takes the mug, fully prepared for some kind of bitter, wooden concoction, and takes a careful sip.

[Will Stanton]

It wasn't particularly bitter or wooden at all, actually -- a bit spicy, perhaps, but the honey cut the acridness quite well. I guess running a bakery taught Will a thing or two about foodstuffs, and so the tea was actually quite pleasant inded.

Well, pleasant with a little bit of a kick. Actually, now that she thought of it, quite a bit of a kick. A significant kick, building up inside.

A hiccough forced it's way out of Ashlie, sparks flying out of her mouth as she 'hic''d.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I'm--hrcck--pretty sure th--hricc--that isn't supposed to---hiccc--happen." she manages, getting surprisingly antsy about her body making involuntary convulsions. She understands the concept of hiccups, of course, but to experience it herself is oddly disconcerting.

[Will Stanton]

"On the contrary, this is a very good sign!" Will nodded excitedly, jotting down notes on the clipboard. "This is one of the common initial side effects of Flarefly Tea, so the fact that this is working is a positive sign about forcing the creation of the resin.

Is this your first time hiccoughing, headmistress?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Yes and I--hrrcc-- do not like it very m--hccck--much."

[Will Stanton]

"Very visceral, isn't it? You should try to enjoy the experience if it's not one that comes naturally to you; one doesn't get to experience diaphragm contractions all willy-nilly," Will said, a flash in his eyes that was far more imp-like than 'normal'.

"Admittedly, it usually doesn't come with sparks -- and, in this case, usually it comes with a few flames here and there. I can't tell if that's because of a weakness of the resin or because your body isn't fully flesh and blood. Ah, biology is a mushy science, isn't it? I'd also expect to see your eyes glowing some, but I'm not really seeing any of that yet. Are you experiencing any other symptoms or sensations? Do try to be thorough, for the notes," he nodded.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Rather than try to talk through the hiccups Ashlie places a hand on a tablet and her voice comes from it's somewhat tinny speakers.

"A certain kind of restless urgency? I don't know if that is your tonic or the intermittent disruption of oxygen due to a very inconsiderate diaphragm. I'm feeling a little warm too, the nanite sub-system is indicating an increase in electrical activity is to blame. Not necessarily accelerated neural activity but an increased intensity of signals..."

[Will Stanton]

"The warmth checks out. Theoretically, your eyes should be turning a brighter red, and your body temperature should be rising as well, though your body might just be too good at processing things for any of those side effects to really come through. Or, it could just be a weaker batch thanks to being artificially constructed. Still! At least a partial success, I should say," Will said, pleased with himself.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I naturally run warmer than average." she tablet notes. "But any effect is proof positive that esoteric properties can be induced. I'd love to find the point at which electricity is no longer considered lightning or what constitutes a 'tree' but that's a whole project in and of itself. Not to mention I have no idea how your processing of ingredients factors into it."

[Will Stanton]

"Lots of variables indeed, and lots of room for experimentation,' Will agreed.

"And don't worry -- the effects should, theoretically, last about 20 minutes or so. You'll be speaking normally again in no time."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Twenty minutes? How do humans live with uncooperative bodies like this?"

[Will Stanton]

"Oh I try not to as much as possible," Will grinned. "Biology stinks. You're sweating or burping or your stomach's growling or your left foot has a cramp, all while you're slowly decaying away. A series of rather fatal design flaws, wrapped up in a single bundle."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Never would have taken you for a transhumanist." she tablet chuckles. "The follies of an intricate system derived from chance and made to only last long enough to proliferate itself. Perhaps I should set some nanites to attempt to bug-fix this codebase."

[Will Stanton]

"I don't think the transhumanists want to claim me, either, as most of them are aiming for a higher, disembodied consciousness sort of thing and not hanging out as a chair or water fountain. You know, a lack of imagination."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Most probably have more megalomaniacal ambitions than the spiritual fulfillment of comprehensive embodiment of mundane objects."

[Will Stanton]

"And yet, it seems like most of them want to just convert themselves to ones and zeroes and be stored on a hard drive smaller than your old mainframe. So who's limiting themselves now?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Perhaps I will understand the urge more once I've acquainted myself with the idea of death. At least I assume this body will age."

[Will Stanton]

"Surely, you don't have to worry about that? I mean, you of all people should know of the importance of regular backups..."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I genuinely don't know if I can disentangle my code from this hardware. At least part of it is running on organic architecture and I would have to disassemble it for a truly comprehensive mapping. Anything else would be... not lesser, but incomplete and divergent. Perhaps that's a purely academic distinction, considering the interruptions and changes my code and hardware have gone through while I maintained what you'd call continuity of consciousness, including a forked backup. The bottom-line is I simply don't know how much of 'myself' I would lose in the process."

As she's talking through the tablet the hiccups seem to finally subside and she takes a deep breath before continuing to speak normally again. "No one would call a human who suffered a stroke or vast amounts of neurological agents a different person, but then most would avoid inducing such a thing intentionally. I have the luxury of being able to trace the exact points where my memory, self-reflection, personality parameters, mood modifiers, external input and so on interact and influence each other but without the structure of the start-up routines and physical servers that ensured my emergence I can't be certain they would work together the same way. Or at all."

[Will Stanton]

"You can't be certain at the moment. That sounds like you have a long-term project to work on," Will pointed out. "Your mind arises from artifical sources, even if it's become more complex than that. It stands to reason that, with enough finagling, it could be preserved as the same."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Arguably I have already found the most secure data storage. No hardware is capable of the level of maintenance and self-repair as this body."

[Will Stanton]

"But, as you say, death is an issue," Will pointed out. "I've heard of fatal errors before, but it tends to be a bit more literal in humans."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Intellectually it's fairly obvious. Emotionally I don't think I've truly internalized the fact that the seat of 'me' is something that isn't tucked away in a cavern. It doesn't drive me as much as the concern for the safety of the students, Heather or even everyone in Mutant Town."

[Will Stanton]

"Well, that's probably fine for now. You're young and fit and all that, you've got quite some time before you have to worry about things breaking down."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"If I didn't know any better I would think you just called me a reckless teenager."

[Will Stanton]

"Oh, no, not at all.

You just got biologically incarnated very recently. You baby."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"We can't all write our ages in scientific notation."

[Will Stanton]

"Your right, I can't, because I have no idea what it would be," Will nodded.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Anything that cumulatively exceeds the age of the universe I feel can be simply labeled as astronomically ancient."

[Will Stanton]

"I'm vintage. Highly collectable."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Don't collectables usually have at least some scarcity? You might be diluting the market." she smirks.

[Will Stanton]

"Well, you've collected all of two so far, and we have an infinite audience to choose from, so when you think about it that way, your FunkoPop shelf is nearly empty."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"You're the one who shot down the beacon, but I can come up with a slower, more selective option if you want. Maybe there's a way to measure the strength of whatever quantum-resonance you have with the rest of yourself, identify the ones more likely to be similar to you. Might take some trial and error to calibrate but I think we could approximate enough to exclude the more extreme aberrations..."

[Will Stanton]

"Selective is the key. I think Miriam had something planned at some point, but you know how reliable she can be at the best of times, and it has not recently been the best of times."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I could employ the algorithm we used to track that musical signal. It's the closest thing I have to something that can identify more contextual space. We'll just have to increase your energetic state and I should be able to create a sort of heatmap. Are you still fine with having exotic particles and lasers shot at you?"

[Will Stanton]

"I mean, I can't think of a better way to spend a Friday night."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Give me... 20 minutes to recalibrate the reactor siphon. See if you can rope another one or two of you into this. Should speed things up if I can just segment the plasma channel into different outputs instead of doing one particle after the other."