Selene is actually on an eight-semiquarters model, with each semiquarter being a bit over a month; it makes it easier for people to pop out of virtuality whenever they're ready if there's never much more than a month's wait for the next batch of classes to start. This means that Lucien's notarized schedule will be obsolete in just a few weeks, but hey.

He can get a tour from an administrative intern and be shown to his hall, a co-ed eight-person corridor on the first floor of a dorm building. Shared bathroom, not too far from the dining hall, spacious single rooms. Everybody's name is on their door, including his.

Lucien settles into his dorm, spending a while unpacking everything very neatly so he doesn't have to go out and meet people right away.

While there are many vending machines on campus and every hall has emergency protein shakes in the broom closet, the dining hall is open a wide but finite range of hours. It would behoove him to make it there in time for dinner if he's as hungry as most eclipsed are.

Hunger successfully motivates him to leave his room and find the dining hall for dinner.

There is a wide variety of food, and a wide variety of students! It's not hard to get a free ride to Selene, and the moon doesn't discriminate, so the kids are from all kinds of backgrounds. For example, according to the maple leaf on his shirt, the sub over there kneeling at an aggressively disinterested domme is Canadian.

Lucien is taking advantage of the free ride himself - though the lack of filtering does make it harder for him to find people he'll fit in with. Any interesting discussions he could listen in on?

Aggressively Disinterested Domme is sitting with a couple other people and they are talking about what would happen to people who could eclipse if they were on the moon.

That is definitely an interesting discussion!

"I wonder if you could extrapolate from eclipse patterns when the moon is at different distances from the people - there's some natural variation already I think."

"Well, of course there is, eclipse happens to everyone all over the globe at the same time or the precogs would be less harried. As far as I've heard it doesn't affect anything but maybe more detailed stats would pick something up. - I'm Isabella, are you new?"

"I'm um. Lucien."

"Yeah I'm new, just arrived earlier today."

Wow she is really pretty.

"Well, welcome to Selene, this's Myeisha and that's Peony." She doesn't introduce the boy on the floor.

He will not ask in that case.

"Thanks."

"Um. What do you study here?"

"Whatever you want, it's not like they can teach magic," says Peony.

"I mean, there are classes about magic, they're just like, history of magery, famous psions," shrugs Isabella. "I'm in a sequence of econ classes, those are fun, and I like loading up on literature."

"I'm trying to get my math requirement out of the way with statistics but it's not the easy A I was looking for," says Myeisha.

"Oh, I'm also taking statistics, and the econ sequence too. And also History of Public Infrastructure."

"They have a history of public infrastructure? I don't remember seeing that in the catalog, maybe it's new," says Isabella. "Who's teaching it?"

"Richard Franklin I think?"

"Huh, I liked his intro American history, maybe I'll take the infrastructure one."

"Wow, I had a class with him on World War II and I couldn't stand him," says Myeisha.

"I'm taking it now because I'm learning Divination, though I'd probably want to take it eventually for fun even if I wasn't."

"I'm going precog," says Isabella.

"Elementalism," says Myeisha.

"Healing," says Peony.

"What led you to pick divination?" Isabella asks.

"I think it's really understudied compared to it's usefulness - there's a huge amount of data which is really costly to gather by normal methods, not to mention things which no one thinks to look for until it's too late. Things like being able to get hundreds of years of data on what environmental factors are important for health without having to worry about noise are incredibly useful, just in a much more ... diffuse way than people normally think of psions being helpful, because it isn't incredibly useful on its own. It's only when you combine it with the ability to implement interventions once you know they're useful that it becomes important."

Lucien is very clearly excited about this topic!

"Oh, neat, I haven't actually heard anyone bring that up before and it's a great point," says Isabella, brightening noticeably. "Have you got any of it working yet or still laying foundation?"

"I can divine how many people are in a room with me. ... it's not exactly the most useful skill."

"Well, it might be if somebody's invisible, but yeah. A start's a start."

"Mhm!"

"What made you pick precog?"

"So I was tempted to heavily frontload all the internal optimizations I want to do - I'm still working on eidetic memory but there's tons of hypercog stuff that appeals which I'm waiting on - but I really don't want to sign one of those predatory contracts where I get a stipend for three years and then they own my soul for fifteen, or whatever, so I want something that I can graduate high school with usable amounts of, and you can do that as a precog even if you only have a few seconds of range. Very monetizable, save the world from diabetic children every year or two, lots of daily life conveniences. And dovetails nicely with the communicative telepathy, which currently I have working only with my twin but it'll be better by the time I'm older."

"Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I think I can manage a living with small amounts of divination but it will be difficult for a while - a lot of the issue is just in proving to people that it's worthwhile to change how they normally do things to incorporate divination based data gathering. I'm working on eidetic memory too."

"I am so excited to have eidetic memory."

"I want to fly," sighs Peony. "But you can't make a living just flying, best it'll do is save you car expenses, Mom says."

"I think I prefer eidetic memory to flying. Not that I have the choice."

"Well, neither do I," says Peony tartly.

"I'd do healing and want to fly if I were a mage, too, Peony," says Isabella.

"Oh um. Sorry."

He would want something construction oriented he thinks but doesn't say.

"No big," shrugs Peony.

"What level of divination do you want to achieve before you start working on other stuff?" Isabella asks.

"I'm not sure but I expect it to be a while? When I get divination down I expect to be spending a lot of my time using it, and will probably iterate from there for a while based on what improvements seem useful."

"Can you get a job in divination, like, a regular one, or do you have to freelance?" asks Myeisha.

"Most regular divination jobs are ones where you have to work exclusive for a single place doing a much smaller amount of divination than I actually think there is use for, I'm hoping to freelance if I can manage to convince more people that divination would be useful for them."

"Probably you can't actually make money off being invited to highly secure locations to check that no one is invisible or shapeshifted in there, since then they'd have to want you in the highly secure location," muses Isabella. "And they'd need separate handling of anti-remote-viewing and so on anyway."

"I think some prisons use divination for security, which seems like a waste of it to me."

"Wow, they can afford that? I guess at the really high security end - but you'd think you could just have diviners pinch-hitting on eclipses and otherwise hire precogs."

"Diviners aren't for breakouts in prisons, more for tracking rates of routine infractions, gang violence, where people are slacking off on their jobs, that sort of thing. Only the very largest prisons with tens of thousands of inmates use them since diviners can be effective for huge populations and ameliorated across that many prisoners it's often cheaper to hire a small staff and a diviner to figure out what sort of thing needs more attention. So you can do things like have one group of guards that is sent to whichever cell block has the most need, instead of having guards assigned to each cell block all the time."

"The whole thing means a lot of people end up thinking of diviners as sophisticated mass surveillance systems, I think."

"Huh, yeah, I could see that being an issue. I hope your stats thing works out, it sounds much cooler."

"I hope so to! Researchers could iterate so much faster if they didn't have to wait to get results."

Lucien wants to say many more things about this subject but prefers to let Isabella direct the conversation.

"I mean they don't have to wait for results if they hire a precog? I don't understand the difference," says Myeisha.

"Most researchers want studies done over the course of several years, which makes precogs way less viable as a quick solution. It's also much harder to iterate on precog results since you have to wait between measurements."

"What does that mean?" Myeisha asks.

"When you find out the results of a test you might want to perform another test based on the results, and doing that a bunch of times in a row takes precogs longer than it takes diviners by a substantial amount."

"Oh, that makes sense," nods Myeisha.

"Plus," says Isabella, "with precogs you need everything ready to go, you need it to be that you'll actually go through with it - which is fine for some kinds of research but you might want to bypass it entirely with riskier or more logistically complicated things. You could divine the results of all those unethical experiments you'd have to be a mad scientist to actually do, and you couldn't precog them. Without being a mad scientist."

"Does that mean there's an incentive for precogs to become mad scientists?"

"Or become diviners!"

"Which one do you plan on?"

"Oh, in the long run I assume I'll get around to divination, I'm hoping to be immortal."

"Oh, cool! I'd like to be immortal but don't have any specific plans for it, aside from hoping that it will be a byproduct if I  succeed at changing how statistical research and logistical planning works that I end up wealthy enough to afford it."

"Yeah, my plan is just to get rich, but as long as I don't develop a taste for yachts I'm all set."

"Could you even like, survive on a yacht?" asks Peony.

"Probably not! - the cane isn't decorative," she adds to Lucien, "I need it to walk."

"It's a very nice cane!"

What is he saying.

"Thank you, it was a graduating from virtuality present."

Lucien is happy to chat with Isabella (and also the other people) for the next few minutes but eventually he finishes his food and finds he is still hungry.

"I'm going to grab seconds, should I bring back something for any of you?"

"Yeah, I saw brownies, bring me a brownie."

"Yes!"

Lucien scampers off flustered and returns with a brownie for Isabella.

"... I forgot to get my own food didn't I."

Awww. "Looks like it."

Peony giggles. The sub kneeling at Isabella whimpers sadly.

Lucien would be confused about the kneeling sub but he is distracted by feeling flustered and needing to go back and get himself food. Again.

Isabella lingers over her brownie. Peony and Myeisha skip off.

Lucien returns with food. He is not sure what to do about the kneeling sub that Isabella is ignoring and sort of glances at him awkwardly.

"Ignore him, he's harassing me and the admin won't do anything about it," mutters Isabella.

Well that sounds worrisome! Lucien will ignore him he guesses.

"The brownie good?"

"Yes it is, thank you very much."

Lucien does not know how to make conversation so he will eat until spoken to or something.

"What else are you taking this semiquarter?"

"Statistics 1, Econ 3, History of Public Infrastructure, Civil Liberties 1, and Applied Biology 1" 

"That's a lot for one semiquarter."

"My dad tried to convince me to take fewer but didn't think it seemed too unreasonable?"

"Anything that isn't your basic 'take this to get a requirement out of the way' type stuff is going to be pretty intense, the requirements are really light because they want to leave you magic practice time and they assume if you're going to show up to Econ 3 you're really into econ and probably not also taking four other things."

"I am really into econ!... and also the four other things."

"Well, I hope you're really good at time management, you're going to have a ton of reading and problem sets. But I'm also on Econ 3 this month so I guess I'll see you there."

"I think I'm probably good at time management? I hope."

His mental model of his mom is laughing but he is not going to mention that to the very attractive dom who is in front of him.

"Well, you have all week to add-drop and they're pretty generous about retakes if need be."

"Mhm. I'm glad I'll know someone in Econ 3."

"Did you test out of the prereqs somehow?"

"Yeah, my dad used to be a professor and taught me econ when I asked him."

"By correspondence when you were in virtuality, or...?"

"Some before, some during."

"That's neat of him. My mom is a teacher but just, like, kindergarten."

"He doesn't teach anymore, which was part of what freed up the time for him to teach me."

"Oh, retired?"

No.

"Um. Yeah, sort of."

She doesn't press. Her brownie's gone and she picks up her cane. "Where'd you move in?"

"Holder Hall."

"Neat, me too, I'm on the first floor east wing."

"West wing for me."

"Swing by if you want to do econ homework together."

Eep.

"I'd like that."

"And speaking of homework I have some nineteenth century literature to look through. I'll see you in Econ. Get my dishes for me." She collects her cane and gets up and tap-tap-taps away.

Lucien barely manages to keep his eep from being audible this time.

He gets her dishes and heads out.

- and then returns because he forgot about his own dishes. 

They have Econ 3 the next morning. Not godawful early, only at half past nine. Isabella shows up to it with a different color t-shirt, identical pair of jeans, and, of course, the cane. "Hi Lucien!"

"Hi Isabella"

Lucien is wearing clothes. Wow that cane is still really cool.

(More specifically, he is wearing a soft casual button down he'd insisted to his dad he'd never actually wear, and jeans.)

She sits at the desk next to his. "Settling in all right?"

"Yeah, and my first class went well I think - I just came from Stats."

"Math first thing in the morning, bold of you. I'm saving stats for some semiquarter when they have it after lunch."

"I actually enjoy having math early I think - it's better than having something which means I have to interact with other people early."

"I'm half tempted to work in not needing sleep early in my magic progression but I went and picked up lucid dreaming in virtuality like everybody else and now the opportunity cost is not conducive. Still, not being groggy would be nice."

"I tried to pick up no sleep and got something out of it but it didn't go all that well so I switched to divination earlier than I'd planned at first."

"Ah, impractical intuitions for how to build a no-sleep power? That sucks."

"It mostly works when I need it. Sort of."

"What does it do, give you nightmares when you finally do sleep? Give everything dream-logic?"

"Lots of twitchiness, task switching gets really hard, feels vaguely like my brain's overheating when I pay attention to something for too long."

"So not really ideal for studying for exams, is what I'm hearing."

"It helps when I really need to cram. Though the overheating feeling is pretty unpleasant."

"Does applying literal cold to your head help?"

"Maybe a bit? It's closer to a fever then actual heat."

"Huh. Well, it's possible the rest of it will come together in short order and you'll have a fine sleep-skipper power one day but if it's this uncooperative it makes sense to focus on the moneymaker first."

"Yeah, thought it was frustrating to miss something so early in my progression."

"I bet one day a psion will turn up with a power to adjust people's magical talents."

"That'd be nice, though I don't expect I'd be first in line."

"Yeah, we're still in early days of the eclipsed boom, I wouldn't expect to see it advertised any time soon."

The teacher turns up and gets them underway on econ.

Lucien finds the class pretty interesting and takes detailed lots of notes.

Isabella is also a notetaker, busily scratching away and annotating everything.

Lucien starts to turn to chat with her after class but then realizes he doesn't have any idea what to chat about and instead scampers away before things are awkward.

Well, he'll have another chance at lunch! This time the guy who's harassing her is bothering somebody else and it's just her and Peony and a few guys from their history class.

"Chinese pirates are cooler though."

"Are you saying Genghis Khan isn't cool?"

Isabella is not contributing to this argument, just systematically demolishing her pasta primavera.

Lucien does not really have opinion on this and instead eats his stir-fry quietly. 

"Hi Lucien," says Isabella, pitching her voice to not really interfere with the history project argument. "Mr. Carruthers assigned groups for our history project today."

"Ah. Are you in their group?"

"Yes, but I find that for once I do not have the strongest opinions in the bunch."

"You normally have strong opinions?"

"Yeah, but in this case my strong opinion is 'we should come to an agreement on a topic, any topic, so we can start the project'."

He really likes the idea of her having strong opinions.

"I hope I don't have any group projects this semiquarter. Partners are fine, less time wasted on coordination that way."

"Yeah, Carruthers said something about not wanting to grade ten projects when he could put us in groups of five and grade four."

"I guess that means more time is spent figuring out what ideas are good but less of his time is spent on that."

"Yeah, hopefully one of the parties will convince the other and then we can settle in to read about one or the other."

After a bit Lucien is done with his food.

"I'd like to go back for seconds again I think." he says, nervously making eye contact with Isabella.

"Yeah, you'd think they'd have larger plates. Grab me a couple scoops of pistachio ice cream while you're up."

Eee his secret plan worked. "Yes!"

Lucien comes back with ice cream. He even remembers to get his own food as well this time.

Om nom nom pistachio ice cream. "Being able to eat real food is so good."

"I think I'd still appreciate the option of the virtuality feeding to be honest. Eating actual food is really nice but it takes so much time out of my day."

"Huh. I mean, you can still eat while doing a lot of things, especially if you like stuff that you can drink through a straw."

"I have to be careful about that, if I get too distracted I end up failing to eat. Especially if I've been sleeping less than normal."

"...huh, I'd expect using magic to make your appetite reassert itself, when you started working on the power were you imagining you'd expand it in some way having to do with hunger?"

"The appetite is still there, it's the ability to steer my attention or multitask that's decreased I think. So I feel hungry but end up too absorbed in something more interesting to actually eat."

"Inconvenient. No immediate brilliant ideas are coming to me besides 'sleep a normal amount'."

"I try."

Mostly.

"One day you will have some spare time and you can fix it so it works correctly."

"Most of my schedule-branches have it waiting at least 50 years."

"You're planned out that far? And making your sleep skipping sustainable isn't on there for that long?"

"My plans that far ahead are very tentative, more like hypothetical paths I've thought about than anything definite. My sleep skipping doesn't work that badly, and there are a bunch of other abilities which would incidinetly decrease the side effects - like having multiple threads of attention."

"Maybe your sleep skipping is fine when all the magic you're doing is sleep skipping, but it could stop being so very fast if you wind up doing more magic and needing more calories. But attention threading does admittedly sound lovely."

"Working on sleep skipping also has the downside that I already know it's usually difficult for me, so a bunch of other things seem more promising."

"It's difficult, but you also started it already - it couldn't possibly take you more time to finish it than it would take the average psion to get it starting from scratch, could it?"

"I'm not sure, I can't see an obvious direction around the current issues at the moment, they seem fairly fundamental to how it works for me."

"Huh! Hard to imagine but I'll take your word for it." Om nom ice cream.

Lucien has not been skipping sleep so he is able to eat food and think about how cool Isabella is at the same time.

"I hope I have a better time with it when I get around to sleep skipping. But eidetic memory first. It'll free up time in its own way."

"Yeah, that's on my schedule for after I make more progress with divination."

"Oh, how much more?"

"Enough that I can manage to answer at least simple questions about what happened within the last year within a room."

"Huh, that sounds almost more like postcognition than divination... like, it is divination but I'd expect to come at it from a different angle if it were me."

"Postcog tends to struggle with quickly getting answers to things like 'did people given this medicine stay in the ER longer than people who weren't in the last year' - most postcogs end up needing to manually count all the patients by reviewing the last year's events."

"That seems like the kind of problem you could also come at from the psionic technology angle, though of course only if the data were good - but if you did both, you could probably divinatorily input the data into the computer, and then non-psions could manipulate the data if they thought of stuff to do with it later too -"

"Oh,  that's a good idea!"

"Thank you! Though of course it requires, as ever, more magic powers, so put it in your calendar for 2034."

"Sure!" Lucien says, grinning slyly, as he takes out his carrying-copy of his long-term schedule book and adds it in.

She giggles. "Adjust to suit, of course, I don't know when in your fifty-year plan psionic tech appears."

"I actually have a bunch of different plans for when to acquire it, and plausibly none of them will turn out to be useful - the field is changing so quickly that planning that bit now isn't really viable."

"Yeah, that makes perfect sense, if you aren't laser-focused on how cool it is that you can do psionics to computers and you don't want to power a virtuality waiting a few years for the field to develop is the way to go."

"Seems pretty likely it'll be amazing - I have a schedule-branch planned out for if it seems psionic tech is worth it a few years from now."

"How can you plan for that when we don't know what about it will be so cool if it's cool?"

"Mostly the plan is to have enough money saved up if I can manage that so I can afford to make a career change suddenly."

"Sensible. Though of course how much money that is depends where you're living, are you frontloading anything that lets you work remotely?"

"No, it didn't seem worth the time."

Oh wow she's really pretty. 

"I guess divination will tend that way as you get more scope anyway."

"Mhm."

"If you'd like to see my psionic skill schedule sometime I could show you?"

Wait did that sound dirty aaaaah

"Sure!"

Lucien has it in his room but inviting her to his room would be weird right? But offering to bring it out or something also seems weird and he is not sure where to bring it too and Isabella is still really pretty and wait is he just not saying anything awkwardly aaaah.

"Do you wanna come over after dinnertime and do the econ reading and show me?"

Nod nod!

Additional nod.

"Good. Be there at six forty-five."

"Yes!"

Bit early to say 'you mean yes ma'am' but she's tempted. She pushes her dishes at him instead; she's done eating.

He was tempted to say it but didn't want to presume.

He will take her dishes with an absolutely ridiculous smile on his face.

"See you later!"

The other people at the table giggle.

"Yes!"

"Um. See you later too!"

Cute.

Off she taps.

Lucien sneaks off to a nearby bathroom where no one can see him so he can be flustered in private. He makes sure to sneak off in a different direction than her because it would be really awkward if he bumped into her right after she left.

They don't have afternoon classes together.

There she is at dinner, though, with a pile of mashed potatoes and broccoli-chicken stirfry. Jackson is kneeling at her again.

Lucien is late for dinner because he was having trouble doing his reading for Civil Liberties 1, which he has first thing tomorrow. His brain has been very distracted about ✨Isabella✨.

Eventually he realizes he is hungry and, even though he has yet to finish his reading, heads to dinner - he has a rule that he isn't allowed to delay eating once he notices he's hungry.

Still, he brings his reading with him and is just finishing it when he sits down at Isabella's table. 

(He continues to follow her lead on ignoring Jackson.)

"Hi, Lucien! Ooh, what's that book?"

"'The Idea of Public Reason Revisited'. It's a reading for the first session of Civil Liberties."

"Oh, neat, what's its thesis?"

"I think it's that societies should base their laws on reasoning that is broadly accepted by it's populace?"

"Huh. It's a nice sentiment but some populaces are dumb."

"Yeah, I'm not entirely certain that Rawls realizes that... the piece sort of assumes that your populace is entirely made up of intellectual philosophers."

"- that would be kind of funny if it were. They'd starve, but they'd have such things to say about it."

"I suspect they'd quickly get along less civily then Rawls seems to imply they would."

"Once they were hungry enough, at least. But maybe I do philosophers too little credit."

"I wonder if any philosophers have had the integrity to check for themselves what the state of nature was like."

"I heard once that Thoreau had his mother do his laundry while he was living in a cabin in the woods."

"I honestly can't imagine any of the writers for this class so far doing their own laundry. Or the teacher for that matter."

"Well, in the modern day we have washing machines, but yes, some people are even allergic to those."

"Yeah."

Lucien does not have more words about laundry evidently, oh no. What is he supposed to say.

"Myeisha's dom has her do all his laundry and she is bizarrely entertained by this. I asked my dad what being a sub was like once and if there was an explanation of liking laundry in there I did not understand it."

"I enjoy doing laundry!"

And both his parents do as well.

"Why though!"

"It's really... calming and satisfying to go through the process of it and organize the clothes and have a presentable final product which is the result of my work?"

She giggles. "If you say so. I'd rather do laundry than wash dishes but I'd rather play Civilization than do either."

"I think I'd prefer laundry folding to playing Civilization to the rest of laundry to washing dishes? All of those are nice though."

"Ooh. We should have a LAN party."

Oh wow she's really pretty when she makes that expression.'

"Oh uh. Yeah that sounds fun!"

"I uh, mostly play on peaceful if that's alright with you?"

"Huh, I usually don't but I don't mind taking peaceful for a spin."

"I'd enjoy non-peaceful where you manage the military side of things for the both of us."

"Would you. Building us wonders of the world while I stomp on the barbarians. Well, we can try it whichever way, though you'll have to link me to your mod for peaceful mode."

"I'd like to build wonders for you!"

... What did he just say.

Whatever it was it's making her grin at him.

"Eep!"

And that cracks her up.

He would like to hide behind his hands now if that's okay.

Yes, that is okay. Cuuuute.

Flustered giggling comes from behind the hands.

"Lucien'n'Isabella sittin' in a tree," whispers one of the other kids at the table, but they don't complete the doggerel when Isabella blinks nonchalantly at them.

Aah! There are other people at this table!

"Ignore them," she says.

"Okay."

This gets more titters and Isabella sighs and stands up, collecting her cane. "Get the dishes and then I think we were going to do the econ reading."

Lucien is happy to be instructed so and scurries off with the dishes.

She waits for him by the exit and walks with him to the dorm at a sedate pace. "Sorry about them, some people manage to completely avoid maturing while they're in virtuality somehow."

"I'm um. Sorry for how I handled it."

"Eh, you were fine. Honestly I think he might have been trying to needle Jackson, who goes after him about as often as me."

"Oh, that does sound like quite a difficult situation to be in."

"Yeah, and the administration won't do anything at all, because, uh, he'll go away if... we tell him to."

"And that doesn't actually work in practice?"

"I mean, it works as far as it goes, the trouble is that the whole issue here is that nobody wants to dom him."

"Um."

"Would he listen to me if I told him to go away?"

"Dunno, I don't think any subs've tried it before. Probably worth a try if you're up for it."

"I'd tell him if you'd like me to, yeah."

"Yeah. Worth a try. Thank you."

He is going to do a thing! For Isabella!

Cuuuuuuute.

She has a dorm room! It's a single, of course, twin bed unlofted, with a laundry basket and her suitcase underneath it, desk in front of the window with bookends it looks like someone made in high school wood shop holding her textbooks upright, and a beanbag taking up the remaining open corner. She gestures him into the beanbag and takes the chair for herself.

This beanbag is helpfully closer to the ground than the chair!

Yes, that's the idea.

She kicks her shoes off and pulls out her econ textbook.

Lucien will dutifully read his copy of the book, taking notes in his notebook as he does. 

Isabella has occasional commentary on the material this margin is too small to contain and also takes a lot of notes.

Lucien has opinions on the material as well! He quite likes this chapter and is happy to show her a chart he draws to capture the different ways this particular thing can vary.

"You have great handwriting."

Lucien smiles and wiggles a bit.

"Thanks!"

Eventually they have completed their economics homework. Isabella checks it off on her to-do list.

"Um. You wanted to see my psionic skill schedule plans?"

"Yeah, show me!"

Lucien scootches up so he's sitting right by Isabella's knees and can show her his skill schedule! It comprises over 20 pages of branching timelines, carefully annotated. It's clear in some places that this isn't the first draft.

"Oh, love the color coding."

Eeeeee. Isabella likes it!

Lucien smiles happily up at her (and her pretty face) for a second before realizing he should say things.

"Thanks! Um. Do you think the red and purple are too similar considering how often they appear together?"

"I guess you could have gone with more of a violet shade but I don't know what materials limitations you were working with. They're not too hard to tell apart in good light."

"Mhm!"

Lucien is going to get distracted now and talk with Isabella about schedule design methodology until told otherwise.

It's full of opportunities to tangent about how she's designing her eidetic memory!

Lucien would like to hear about this! Isabella designing things is the best!

"So I'm doing it in what's the most intuitive way for me, obviously, but when I was reading up on other eidetics they all seemed to suck, which is probably partly because of what's intuitive to me in the first place but also, like, I don't want to have flashbacks every time I try to recall something, or only be able to recollect things I paid attention to - have you heard the expression 'almost anyone can imagine a tiger, almost no one can count the stripes' -"

"Yeah?"

"So, I want to be able to count stripes of any tigers I've seen, seems like a ripoff if I can't. And I want to be able to, like, manipulate the memories - not quite like computer files, but if I have the thought process 'I need to do that, I promised to do that, I was thinking about doing that', then this should compile into a to-do-list stored as the memory of when I had that thought -"

"Oooh, I wonder if I could manage to incorporate my schedule timeline formating into my eidetic memory once I get to that -" 

"Yeah, that's why it came to mind - you're using lots of very helpful data-viz stuff, and my plan for remembering and then arranging into new memories previous thoughts I've had doesn't actually incorporate that at all, and it doesn't feel like it needs to but it's the first time it's occurred to me that there might be weaknesses in my eidetic structure, though I guess incorporating a lot of data viz stuff would get more into mindscaping."

"Hm, sometimes, when I've gone over the same piece of chart enough times, I've ended up memorizing. I think the way my brain thinks about it ends up being ...:" and Lucien goes on to describe a mental map of the knowledge that this margin is too small to contain.

"I wonder if you could incorporate something like that into eidetic memory without it being mindscaping?"

"Huh, that's almost more procedural than episodic..."