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Cam studies. He studies madly. The next week elapses with him having very little sense of individual days. He doesn't want anyone to know anything special is up, so he goes to a movie with Renée and to a friend's house after school to play Nintendo games and Charlie gets his weekly phone call and he shows up to his classes and gets his homework adequately done. But other than that he studies. He wants to be fluent in this thing inside three months if possible. It's easier than Spanish, he's motivated, he can use it in everyday conversations as he asks passing animals and convenient plants how smart they are (dogs: smarter than goats; squirrels: about goat level; his friend's hamster: dumb as a rock; shrubs: way dumber than trees; indoor potted rosemary: just a step above grass) and chats with Grace, he's basically dropping himself in an immersion course with some inconvenient English here and there so he can interact with humans. He thinks three months is ambitious but reasonable.
He's not actually doing that many spells. He does wheedle tofu into tastiness on a nightly basis, and when he feels a cold coming on he looks up a spell about that, but he wants to know what he's doing before he gets going on what he most wants to be doing, because he wants to be doing big things. He swore to oppose death. He meant that.
Today he is preparing to oppose death in his backyard. It's threatening rain and he doesn't want to be all the way down the street with Leafy if the clouds open up. The jerk tree doesn't talk to him if he doesn't talk to it and it's perfectly serviceable as something to sit under, anyway.
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lifes_sake
"It's hard to calculate because different species are so different," she says. "But mostly late childhood or early adolescence. And the ones who get it earlier tend to be smarter, but it's not a sure bet."
"She's the smartest wizard we've met, though, and she got it youngest," says Jellybean.
"She's the smartest wizard we've met, though, and she got it youngest," says Jellybean.
"Nope," says Jellybean. "She's just crazy smart, wait a while, you'll see what I mean."
Matilda smiles slightly.
Matilda smiles slightly.
lifes_sake
"Cam is really smart too," Grace pipes up loyally.
Cam pats her but has no further comment of his own on the subject.
He flips to his section on plans.
"So, all of this is pending while I learn more about the situations on non-Earth planets and set priorities, and any of it could be rearranged in terms of what's easiest to do and least likely to attract retaliation, but I think the highest leverage ends available - given what I've learned about how smart various things are, in particular - include things like pushing recycled paper and general anti-deforestation measures; intervening in relatively infrastructurally simple issues like the aforementioned iodine poisoning and possibly, depending on how easy it is to scale up, various forms of disease - as opposed to causes of death like war which would be a lot harder to address directly or safely; and food security, which is especially important to address because people are already working on it and could easily wind up throwing more rather than less intelligent food sources at the problem if this happened to be cheaper or easier."
Cam pats her but has no further comment of his own on the subject.
He flips to his section on plans.
"So, all of this is pending while I learn more about the situations on non-Earth planets and set priorities, and any of it could be rearranged in terms of what's easiest to do and least likely to attract retaliation, but I think the highest leverage ends available - given what I've learned about how smart various things are, in particular - include things like pushing recycled paper and general anti-deforestation measures; intervening in relatively infrastructurally simple issues like the aforementioned iodine poisoning and possibly, depending on how easy it is to scale up, various forms of disease - as opposed to causes of death like war which would be a lot harder to address directly or safely; and food security, which is especially important to address because people are already working on it and could easily wind up throwing more rather than less intelligent food sources at the problem if this happened to be cheaper or easier."
"I see what you mean," says Matilda.
Jellybean closes his eyes and leans his head on her shoulder.
Jellybean closes his eyes and leans his head on her shoulder.
lifes_sake
"Have you guys got any pending inroads on those or related things, or educational historical background of wizards meddling in world affairs that I should learn, or helpful notions on methodology that I shouldn't pollute with my own ideas before everything's been written down so we have a good diverse brainstorm?" Cam prompts.
Matilda shakes her head. "We've never been so systematic. But I'm interested," she says.
lifes_sake
"Okay. General categories of potential actions include motivated capitalism, sabotage-and-superheroism, and activism-type stuff. My naive guess is that the first is the most scalable and probably the most long-term productive unless one of us turns out to be really good at getting petitions signed or it's easier to do large amounts of magic by enchanting objects or whatever than I currently think it is. Inconveniently, it's also the hardest for a fourteen-year-old to do, because kids taking an interest in environmentalism or world hunger is cute and anybody doing sabotage-and-superheroism doesn't have to worry so much about whether anyone takes them seriously, but if you start a company to sell doctored potato seeds or whatever you have to be taken seriously."
"Hmm," says Matilda. "But we do have access to adults."
lifes_sake
"Yes. I don't think I want Renée managing a company for me, though - she's very scattered; even if she were only doing approximately what we told her she'd wind up dropping the ball somewhere. And she wouldn't want to give up teaching. Charlie's even less of a good idea. Would Jenny be more helpful?"
"Probably," says Matilda. "She's busy - she runs a school - but if I asked, I bet she could find someone else to do that for her."
lifes_sake
"Okay. So that's a possibility. Magic up some true-breeding really idiotic high-yield nutritious food, sell it, turn enough of a profit to outright give it away in key areas. Or pharmaceuticals, but that's probably harder to scale if we are in fact relying on magic for the purpose - except I think some pharmaceutical chemicals are actually made by bacteria, so maybe not that hard."
"Chicken," says Jellybean, and giggles.
"Chickens are only barely smarter than grass," Matilda explains.
lifes_sake
"Oh, thank goodness, I can add chicken back into my diet," laughs Cam. "I didn't know anybody who kept chickens, I was basing everything on a goat I quizzed."
"I don't think I've ever met a goat," says Matilda.
lifes_sake
"Vivian the goat is capable of responding negatively to the question of whether she wants to be eaten and positively to the question of whether she's okay with being milked."
"Chickens can tell you things about what it's like to be them right now, but they don't express preferences, they just - report," she says. "Like grass, if grass had more states of being than 'I'm grass!'."
lifes_sake
"All right, I think I feel okay about eating them then. And extrapolating to turkey, unless you know specifically about those too. I should really just tour a farm or something, Renée'll take me if I tell her the whole story and what it's for."
"Good idea," says Matilda.
lifes_sake
"Apparently the senior wizard around here is a cat," Cam adds. "I'd need to look up statistics on how many cats are affected by various cat-affecting things to know how that sort of issue stacks up against chopping down trees and various human stuff and the offplanet equivalents, though."
"Honestly," says Matilda, "I bet you could spend a couple lifetimes just prioritizing at all. Might as well start on your own planet. It's practically bite-sized in comparison."
lifes_sake
"With any luck I'll live a very, very long time, but you have a point. I'm also less likely to stumble into a bad misstep on a familiar world. And I can get started on productive work instead of learning curve sooner."
"And once you've fixed Earth you'll have a better idea of how to do the rest," she says.