"Whatcha got so far?" he wonders.

"The reason I don't want to read your thoughts in 'thought form', so to speak, is that I think it might get confusing - my memory's not going to fool me anymore, but thinking someone else's thoughts directly still might. So I want to have a basic text channel to just read, with pictures where pictures go - but that won't cover everything. So now I'm inventing symbols to stand in for various things that text and pictures might fail to handle, and if I'm curious about one I want to be able to mentally poke it and open it up, and attaching that opening to a unique action should make it clear that the thought behind the symbol is yours and not mine. I'll probably want to be able to open up words or phrases, and the pictures, too, for more detail - the text and images are just a first pass." She tilts her head. "Do you want any more fine detail on your end - to know what I'm opening up and what I'm just skimming?"

"Sure, might as well," he says. "That'll be fun."

"Okay. I guess the obvious way to communicate that is just with a plain intensification of the regular signal, when I poke something."

"Sure!"

"I guess the trouble with this plan boils down to my cognitive speed." She hmmms thoughtfully. "I wonder if there are any disadvantages to just ramping that up as fast as a hex'll take it."

"You will get bored as shit," Alice predicts.

"Possible. Maybe if I make it at-will like the invisibility, or suppressible like the regeneration. Or maybe I should just save it till I start seriously working towards taking over the world."

Bella laughs. "What else would one do with wish powers, really, I don't know what Elias and his friends were thinking."

"Maybe they were all like me," he suggests, tucking his hands behind his head and leaning back in his chair, "and just wanted to screw around with magic a little. Maybe they were dabblers."

"Also they had never heard of Wolverine," he contributes. "Huh. Why not just get an Internet connection in your brain too? There's gotta be a superpower for that."

"I'll think about that one," Bella says. "I'm not sure about that. It might mess with the servers somehow - I mean, how would I assign my head an IP address?"

Bella puts the pancake in a plastic bag and puts the bag in the fridge, and turns the oven off. "I also wouldn't want to hardcode my brain with a particular browser, when the state of the art in browsing and web standards are going to be all different in a year or two anyway."

"See, you are smart," says Alice. "You think of things."

"Also, I wished myself programming powers a minute ago," Bella says brightly. "But apparently I wasn't specific enough, so I don't know any programming languages, just general principles and pseudocode and so on - which is fine for what I wanted them for, anyway."

"I love you," says Alice.

"I'm so surprised," Bella deadpans. "Goodness gracious. What brings this on?"

"I dunno." He shrugs; smiles. "The fact that you wished yourself programming powers?"

"Why that, though?"

"Not sure," he says. "'Cause you used magic, and you used it to do something useful and cool?"

"In that case, I wonder how long it'll take for you to get tired of reminding me," laughs Bella. "Okay, I have one hex left on here." Necklace-heft. "I think I have enough symbols and I can presumably add more with pentagons if I'm getting too many black squares - meaning 'other'. Let's see, what am I trying to neglect?"

"Huh?"