"He went to the backyard, not his room."

"Ah, right. I will go find him then." 

Vanyel is back with Leareth a few minutes later. He's content to wait on visiting Endorë until he's done a few more days of progressive Gate exposure and seen how much improvement he can reach; he's also willing to have Cam sedate him for the Gate-crossing if he's not at the point of doing that comfortably yet.

Given that he's the delaying factor on their departure, he's pretty impatient to try more Gate-exposure, and wants to do another round immediately. 

"Uh, lemme look up best practices. How long were you out here subjective?"

"Hmm. It felt like about twenty minutes that I was in the backyard, and before that – a couple hours that we were reading, I guess, after the last try." 

"Journal of Modern Psych says no fewer than six sessions and their protocol says twice a week but we can probably squeeze that down by a factor of twooooo or so if you're in a hurry?"

"...What, you mean I have to wait days?" 

"...yes."

"Why? Surely it'd go faster if I did it at least a couple of times a day." 

"Do you get better at lifting weights faster if you do it for twelve hours in a row?"

"Well, no. But that's different." Sigh. "Once a day?" 

"I'm not a psychiatrist and I'm not really comfortable improvising."

"Vanyel, in the absence of understanding how this practice was developed and why the suggested timing is twice a week, I think we ought not modify it too drastically. Cam, what was your source for that? I might do more research on it, I am curious anyway and I do not actually have several weeks' worth of Gate-development that can be done in isolation without a Maia to work with." 

"Journal of Modern Psychology of the University of Utopia Planitia."

"Could you make me a–" Leareth stops. "Hmm. Actually, might I request that you make one of your devices for reading things on where they are searchable? It seems very useful." 

"The kind I have requires brain surgery."

"I would prefer to avoid that – is there a less advanced type that does not require it?" 

"Yes, but it's much less convenient and you have a steeper learning curve to operate it. - also by 'brain surgery' I mean 'me appearing a small object in your brain', but I'd hesitate to do this without some research first because I don't know if mages have weird brains."

"I would not be surprised if we do but I am also unsure how you would research it. I doubt anything has been written about it in our world that Bar would have – our science for examining brains is not very advanced." 

"Uh, naively I'd make a basement dweller mage - or a few - and do various scans and maybe dissections. It's possible Bar would know or that infirmary staff could spot me."

"Fascinating. I would be curious about the results in general, not only for the computer application. Are the scans themselves safe? If so, I would not mind being scanned." 

"Scans're safe. You have to hold really still though."

"I think I can manage that." 

"I'll pass," Vanyel says dryly. "Um, where's my sister?" 

"Went off with Nechar."