[Fiction] A Chemical Reaction [Completed]

[Regina Newcastle]

to: rnewcastle@oxford.edu

from:gmot@binary.op

subject: Hi hi! I'm in England!

Hello!

After a preposterously long flight that I hope to never repeat, I have landed in Penzance, way the hell out here in the West. What would be the best way for me to go from here?

Regards,

Meghan

__________________________________________________

recipient:gmot@binary.op

sender: rnewcastle@oxford.edu

subject: re:Hi hi! I'm in England!

Ti22,

"Meghan", is it? I apologise if you didn't favor my nickname for you; your title, while apt, is somewhat cumbersome, and I tend to speak what I write in my mind.

At any rate! I'm happy that you made it safely! As for finding me, you can find the Penzance railway station at the terminus of the Great Western Main Line. You should be able to take First Great Western rail to Bath, where you can take the West Coast Mainline to Oxford. If you tell me approximately when you'll be arriving, I can be there to meet you. If you're without money, let me know and I'll come out to Penzance to get you.

Look forward to seeing you soon!

Regards,

RN

__________________________________________________

to: rnewcastle@oxford.edu

from:gmot@binary.op

subject: re:Hi hi! I'm in England!

RN,

Meghan is fine. I just use that and GMoT interchangably. I'm somewhat embarassed to report that I didn't bring any money with me, since I don't have any. My material needs are so limited that it's hardly been necessary.

I could fly in following the rail lines, though. It looks like it would take about five hours. Shall I just do that then? It would probably be easier that way since I also didn't bring any identity papers and I'm in the country illegally.

Did I mention I'm a scofflaw?

I'll write next from the station in Oxford!

--Meghan

__________________________________________________

recipient:gmot@binary.op

sender: rnewcastle@oxford.edu

subject: re:Hi hi! I'm in England!

Meghan,

If it wouldn't inconvenience you to do so, by all means, make your way here. I extended the offer and would have gladly made good on it, but I won't lie; there's no paper in my pocket.

Let me know when you reach town, and I'll come pick you up!

Regards,

RN

__________________________________________________

It was early in the afternoon that Regina received a final missive from Meghan, alerting her that she'd arrived in Oxford and was awaiting her presence at the tube station. She had just finished a morning shift as a dishwasher at the campus dining hall, and was more than tired enough to lay down for a nap again, already. Well, that wasn't entirely accurate. She wasn't tired, per se; her nova metabolism saw to that, and even if it did not, she was capable of slightly increasing epinephrine and dopamine levels and reducing adenosine accumulation in her own brain, assuring she could stay "up" as long as she wished. She was just weary. While work no longer meant bringing home a very baseline set of lower back aches, eyestrain and dishpan hands, it nevertheless left her feeling entrenched, frustrated and bored. I wonder how many novas keep their rotten day jobs after they erupt?, she wondered to herself, counting the bumps in the ceiling, reciting Joyce's 'Ulysses' word for word, and working out a battery of experiments to test today's pet theory regarding clownfish, all as she lay back on her rumpled bedcovers, one dishwater-wet shoe dangling off her toes.

Recent events had been troubling her, and it was more than just her life at Oxford that was the problem. She'd been having verbal sparring matches with many of the novas on the forum she frequented, something she expected, but she found herself caring less and less. It gave her some pause that some of the people there had actually threatened her for expressing her opinion, and Wakinyan, for some reason, had even bothered to warn her that some people might want to do more than threaten. Regina was prepared to defend herself, but she wasn't prepared to deal with a culture wherein a peer would threaten to kill you for having a differing opinion. Even outside of academia - even outside of academia outside of Britannia - rational people do not threaten each other for differing viewpoints. The fact that there were novas in this world who were so ignorant and so angry at having it exposed just confirmed in her mind what she already knew; God may not play dice with the universe, but God is not at the controls. And mother nature is one cold, callous, blind bitch. She groaned audibly, wondering whether she should even bother to speak with them again.

As she lay there thinking, a familiar note alerted her that she'd received an opnet message. Lethargically, she sat up, scooted over to her computer, punched in her password and opened up the client, where she found a message from 'Meghan', who until recently she had only known as 'Girl Made of Titanium', reporting that she'd arrived at Oxford. Finally, some good news!

Regina leapt up out of her chair, taking off her work apron, stained and soaked and stinking as it was, and threw it on her bed. She slipped on her overcoat, grabbed her keys, slipped on a new pair of shoes, and headed for the door, making the mistake of catching herself in the mirror set into her wardrobe door as she did.

She stopped, examining herself, unsure why. She found a hundred things wrong in a matter of seconds: her hair was dull and flat, her cheeks were too flush, her stomach too protruding, her face too plain, her-- She caught herself wondering why she cared. The last time she'd bothered to even look at herself in a mirror, it was because an Adonis of a boy had asked her out on a date (she thought), and today she was just going to meet Meghan, an OpNet friend. Were they friends? Meghan hardly knew what the word meant outside of a dictionary definition. People tend to throw that word around awfully loosely, too much so for her tastes. Judging by Oxford english, few people had any real "friends". She sighed, transfixed on her own imperfection. None of it was anything that couldn't be fixed. With not so much as a wrinking of her forehead, she could make herself look like Alejandra, or Slattern, or Velvet, or V, or Marilyn Monroe, or Cleopatra. She could make her bum smaller, her face more interesting, her stomach shrink, her knees less knocked. As she catalogued in her mind her myriad imperfections and the ways in which she could easily fix them, she wondered at the back of her mind, still, why it mattered. Ultimately, she resolved, she did not, and decided she was just nervous (even though she wasn't nervous meeting Crimson Dwarf or Wakinyan, she reminded her impetuous brain, before hastily reminding the offending organ to be polite and that it ought not think of things it knows might cause her to examine upleasant data at the moment), and walked away from the mirror.

She returned to it a second and a half later, feathered her bangs slightly, desperately tried to unrumple her jacket, and ducked back out the door.

The train station was a brief distance away, a short walk over the river Thames, not even a kilometer long. Regina hurried along, not wanted to seem or looking too eager, but aware that she was walking a little bit faster than was normal. She arrived at the station almost in no time, and there, with a small group of spectators gathered around, unsure as to whether they were observing museum piece or performance art, motionlessly stood a young lady with a smooth, metallic facade and a somewhat expectant look on her face. Regina approached the "statue" and rather happily offered forth an outstretched hand. "Regina Newcastle", she exclaimed. "'Appy to meet you."

[Doctor Nova Madigan]

Fifteen minutes earlier:

Meghan "Girl Made of Titanium" Cutter stopped typing on her Apple OpBook Pro Titanium for the tenth time in the last minute. Yet another curious stranger had interrupted her OpMail note, this time by standing in her field of view and peering at her over the false horizon of her laptop's display and waving tentatively. She blew out an exasperated puff of air (hardly necessary since she did not breathe, but it communicated exasperation very clearly), and returned the man's gaze. Meghan widended her eyes slightly, in lieu of arching her absent eyebrows.

"Yes?" she asked, neutrally.

"Are you really Typhoon's daughter?" asked the man, straight-faced.

Holding herself very still and blinking once, Meghan made a very elaborate display of patience.

"No," she replied, betraying neither annoyance nor cordiality, "I am not. I'm the daughter of a diplomat and a religious fanatic, both of whom are now dead."

"Oh, er," the man replied in obvious discomfort, taking his cap into his hands and frowning, "bad luck, that." He took a few uncertain steps away from Meghan, then turned and walked away more quickly.

Meghan cast an evil gaze at the retreating man's back before returning to her note to Regina Newcastle. She decided to end the note abruptly, before she could be interrupted again, and clicked on SEND. Closing the notebook, she looked around the square outside the railway station. Half a dozen people abruptly looked away from her, embarassed to have been caught staring.

If they're going to stare, I may as well give them a show, she decided.

Meghan strolled to the middle of the small pedestrian square and then picked her spot, pirouetting gracefully once on her slender and toeless feet and then freezing solid. She held a ballet dancer's en pointe pose, one arm upraised, the other one cradling her OpBook at her side.

A few onlookers applauded briefly, but then the applause trailed off uncertainly as Meghan continued to hold her pose.

Five minutes later, Meghan had not moved in the slightest, still perfectly balanced on her toes. A small knot of curious people surrounded her, some of whom had seen her moving, and some who had arrived later. A toddler, holding his mum's hand like a safety tether, extended his other hand to Meghan's knee and tentatively touched it.

"Don't touch me please," Meghan said, without moving any part of her face or body. Her voice, while as clear as usual, seemed to have emanated from a nonspecific point within her body. The boy jumped as if shocked, and returned to the safety of his mother's side.

Variations on this encounter repeated a few times, until eventually Regina Newcastle emerged from the small crowd and greeted Meghan.

Unfreezing, Meghan came off her toes to a relaxed flat-footed posture and smiled broadly for Regina, accepting her offered hand.

"Good to meet you too," she said cheerfully. The crowd began to disperse again, shocked into embarassed awkwardness by her sudden return to animation. Meghan cocked her head and chuckled.

"If I had any sense I'd have set a hat at my feet and collected tips. Maybe next time. Shall we blow this train station? It's very public."

[Regina Newcastle]

Regina glanced uncomfortably around at the assembled gawkers, as if she had just noticed them for the first time. Perhaps she just noticed something about them that made her uncomfortable. She recovered quickly, however, genuinely glad to be shaking Meghan's delicate, steely hand. "More'n likely", she answered. "Certainly beats the bloke who shows up here playing the bagpipes periodically."

Regina glanced around Meghan's petite frame for a moment, as if searching for something. Her eyes fixed for a fraction of a second on Meghan's computer sack, then continued to scan the vicinity until she inquisitively concluded, "No luggage, Meghan?" Halfway through saying it, she realized what a bloody idiot she sounded like, but kept saying it because she reasoned that saying something stupid and sputtering out halfway was even more awkward than saying all of something stupid. She blushed visibly, but less from her own stupidity than from the sudden and obvious realization that Meghan was quite realistically nude (not that it mattered, of course). Regina blanched slightly, breaking eye contact by staring directly into the spot where Meghan's eyebrows would have been if she was flesh and blood. "Oh, um..." She laughed politely. "Silly me. Of course you've no luggage. Well, if you've no need to be dropping your things off at my flat, is there somewhere you'd care to go directly, for lunch or tea or just to walk around? We could also head back to my place, of course, if you'd care to rest a bit."

[Mithril]

"I'm good with whatever," Meghan said in an easy-going manner. "I don't need to eat, but I can talk with you while I do."

After a pause, she realized that she'd been ambiguous.

"What I mean is: I no longer require food or drink, but I enjoy the social aspect of doing so with other people. Sorry." Meghan smiled sheepishly.

She seems embarassed about something, Meghan observed, but what?

Meghan did not realize it herself, but she was slowly losing her connection to the human condition. She stood naked in a very public place, and nothing at all seemed odd to her about that.

[Regina Newcastle]

Regina nodded emphatically, comically so, even. "I understand, yes, of course. I take my meals less frequently than usual, as well. Unfortunately, it hasn't done a bloody thing to reduce my waistline." She chuckled nervously, hoping Meghan would find her attempt at self-depricatiation humourous, then decided almost instantly that she didn't really want to know, and hurried the conversation along, leaving just enough room for a pregnant pause before adding "Well, I suppose you've been gawked at enough for one day, aye? Perhaps we should just head back to my place for the moment and decide what, if anything, to do from there? If nothing else, we can make conversation along the way, and when we get to my flat, you can laugh at my crippled and laughably archaic computer and marvel at my collection of esoteric first eddys of science books. Fascinating, I'm sure." Regina welled up enough confidence (serotonin) to lower her gaze at the steely figure of a girl, wrinkle her nose, squint conspiratorially, and smile just so.

She's beautiful, she thought.

Not that it matters.

[Mithril]

Science books, Meghan thought, we're cooking now, baby.

"Lead the way," she said pleasantly, "that sounds like a good way to begin. It feel good just to have land under my feet for a change after two weeks of flying and occasionally bobbing in the ocean."

Meghan was a bit surprised at Regina's appearance and demeanor, but concealed that. Every other nova she'd met had been physically or socially spectacular in some fashion. Even Flicker, who was quite plain, still had her bizarre flickering aberration. Still, she remembered, it was always the quiet ones who had the freakiest private lives.

At least, she hoped so.

Hey, I was once quiet and bookish too, she thought. Let's see what happens.

[Regina Newcastle]

Regina and Meghan began the brisk walk that would take them back to the Oxford commons. At Meghan's admission, Regina tried to register surprise in her voice, but her throat betrayed her, and she ended up registering something closer to nervousness than incredulous shock. "Two weeks?", she gaped. "I had no idea it took so bloody long. Well, certainly, there must be something specific you'd like to do, aye? Commune with solids somehow?" A mix of mild embarrassment, amusementm, confusion and provocative rush hit her like a bolt of blue. That isn't what I meant, she persuaded herself.

[Doctor Nova Madigan]

"What I'd like to do is to just visit with you for a bit," Meghan explained as she followed along, "and learn your viewpoints on what it means to be a nova, and how you live."

Meghan looked at the neighborhood as they walked. The architechture and people were ninety percent the same as what she'd seen anywhere else in the world, but the other ten percent was just different enough to identify it as being "England" and nowhere else.

"You see," Meghan continued, "I don't eat, sleep, breathe, pass wind, have a heartbeat, get bad breath, become fatigued, or feel pain anymore. So my actual physical needs are all taken care of with no effort or expense. I am now faced with the happy problem of sorting out how I want to live. That's why I want to meet as many novas as I can."

[Doctor Nova Madigan]

(Note to the readers: I'm going to keep screwing up and posting GMoT fics on Flicker's account, so just get used to it, please. Sorry about that. --NP)

[Regina Newcastle]

Faced with a serious subject, Regina regained control of her brain for a moment as she considered Meghan's dilemma. "I understand. I hate to disappoint you, though, but I fear I may not be one to ask. In fact, I have a very tentative meeting set up with Neil at a later date so as to have this very discussion. He...perplexes me so..." She mentally shook herself awake, turning her attention back to Meghan as they continued their brisk voyage over the Thames, nearing the stately campus.

"Well, caveat firmly in place, is there anything specific you'd like to ask me?" Fishing around her satchel, Regina produced a tin of dried figs, a couple of which she popped into her mouth. Gesturing towards her companion, she added "I know you don't eat, but I suppose it'd be rude to not offer."

[Mithril]

"Thanks, but no," Meghan replied politely, declining the offered figs.

Regina had mentioned Neil Preston, a man with whom Meghan had lived since March. Since then, she'd formed a very definite opinion of his character, and she took her chance to express it.

"Yeah, Neil, he's a perplexing one," Meghan began. "He doesn't relate to others in a way that is easy to explain. What I mean is, just when you think everything is okay and he's just a regular guy you can talk to, he--" Meghan paused, searching for the right word, "he geeks out and starts talking about bio-energy this and evolutionary marking that and it all just shoots over my head."

Meghan waved her hands a bit as she vented her pent-up feelings, glad for the opportunity. "I'm sure that the things he says could be said more plainly," she continued. "He's talking about simple concepts. But he uses ridiculous terminology-- some of it made-up, I think-- to make it all sound so bloody important."

Meghan slowed her delivery and paused a moment, then she looked Regina in the eye again, her frustration spent.

"What is it about Neil that perplexes you, if I may ask?" she asked.

[Regina Newcastle]

It was strange for Regina to see Meghan so animated. She clearly had a strong personality, something Regina never doubted, but to actually physicall see this girl of living metal so fluidly emotive, so very human, was at once unsettling and somewhat endearing. Regina felt as though she'd just been let in on some great secret, like she'd seen behind the curtain, however briefly. She wondered at the dichotomy Meghan seemed to live with, and began to question how human-like she still was. She tried, with much difficulty, to not "read" her young companion; she didn't want their friendly visit to be tainted by character examination and mental sabotage and calculating. Still, some of it could not be helped.

She listened pensively to Meghan ranting, nodding appreciatively at correct intervals, taking in everything said to her while secretly thrilling to the thought of being somebody's confidant, feeling the heady rush of gossip for the first time in her recollection. At the same time, she grasped that Meghan had some larger problem with Neil aside from what she was saying. Without even realising she was doing so, she found herself examining speech patterns, body language, extrapolating on what she knew of Meghan, of Neil, of Flicker, of their situation, and it was clear to her that Meghan's problem with Neil was much larger, much more personal, than a simple semantic misunderstanding. Her mind raced through possibilities, trying to divine the meaning behind her words, not realising she was doing precisely what she had told herself only moments ago she would not. She had so nearly reached some form of probable conclusion when Meghan finished her rant, turning to her and looking her directly in the eye, stopping their venture in their tracks cold.

Staring into Meghan's blank, reflective eyes so suddenly, Regina's train of thought derailed, and for a moment, she was lost in the reflection in Meghan's eyes, her own staring back at her. She felt momentarily ashamed, as if she'd been caught red-handed trying to analyse her companion. She was briefly shamed, trying not to show it, and Meghan asked her what so confused her about Neil.

"You see," she began, having thought much on this matter, "it's his altruism. He seems like such a genuinely nice fellow, but I don't understand 'nice' in terms of quantum intellect. Great intellect historically goes hand-in-hand with great suffering, and Neil seems to be aflame with the absurd notion that you can help everyone, that you can save everyone, indeed, that everyone should be saved. As I understand it, he and I have very similar powers: he and I both can influence radical change in people without so much as a wiggle of the fingers. But where I am very hesitant to use my powers at all, Neil dispenses his gifts freely, with all the reservation and seemingly forethought of a man with a sack of infinite money. How does he resolve his widespread and utterly indiscriminate altruism with the basic tenets of natural selection? Should everyone live to a ripe, old age? Should nobody get sick or crippled or be infertile or even be ugly?" Regina sighed heavily, clearly exasperated. "At first glance, it seems as though Neil uses his abilities so flippantly and irresponsibly, but I know he's smarter than that. That's why I want to talk to him. I want to understand how he rationalises his behaviour. It's as if..." Regina paused, allowing for a few moments to pass, pretending to think. Rather, the two of them had passed the grimy little city of Oxford and entered the natural preserve contained on the campus, more akin to a wilderness refuge than a simple park, and for a moment, Regina wanted serenity and quiet as she appreciated the austere and functional beauty of nature and the chance that she had to share it with Meghan.

A minute or so passed as Regina lead them to a pathway that wended through the naturally beautiful area, and she finally finished her thought, "It's as if he's concerned with the individual, not the species. Not that I'm against the individual!", she hastily corrected herself, almost apologetically. "But, the needs of the many, you know? It just doesn't make much bloody sense t'me t'all."

[Mithril]

Meghan listened attentively to Regina's explanation as they walked, first through the uninteresting city of Oxford, and then in to the wilderness. She was struck by the incongruity of finding such seeming randomness in the middle of a sea of human-created order.

"Random altruism," Meghan mused, the beginning of an idea dancing on the fringes of her consciousness. "Random, you say."

Meghan seemed to get a faraway look in her eyes, a remarkable feat considering that they were blank silvery-grey discs. She projected this impression in the expressiveness of her face and the cant of her posture instead of in her otherwise featureless eyes. She held this expression deliberately for Regina's benefit, so that she would see that an idea was percolating, and that she'd need a moment to coax the appropriate words to form in her mind.

Meghan slowly turned in place, looking at the trees and the underbrush, and at the shafts of light which peeked through the boughs and splashed irregular patches of light onto both the path and the un-groomed undergrowth.

"Humans have structured an ugly world," Meghan began slowly, still turning in slow circles, her arms at her sides. "The order they create is mostly utilitarian, uninteresting, banal, predictable, and, ugly, I guess."

She stopped her pirouette to look Regina in the eyes.

"Like the city we just passed through," Meghan said, "it could have been anywhere in the world. It has the same types of shops, restaurants, services, and so on, and it's all in the same general shape and format. Boring, predictable, ugly."

Meghan smiled and held her arms out, indicating the wood.

"This, however," she continued, "is random, beautiful, unplanned, and for me unexpected. Maybe Neil's like that, too. Like a wilderness in the middle of a city, he doesn't make sense. In the center of so much order and conformity he carries on in his own way."

Meghan shrugged, and took a few quick steps back to Regina's side.

"I could be wrong, though," she said with a wry shrug and a crooked smile.

[Regina Newcastle]

Inwardly, Regina heaved a sigh. She found herself liking Meghan a great deal, and didn't want to plainly say to her Yes, actually, you're pretty bloody well wrong. She wasn't debating, she told herself, she was conversing, and Meghan wasn't her opponent. She opted for diplomacy, trying her best to be moderate, but it was hard, so used to the rigors of heated debate was she. "There's beauty in mans artifice as well, Meghan. Admittedly, Oxford isn't the most beautiful locale in the world, but it makes a fitting habitat for its denizens. There's a lot of beauty to be had in the unnatural. Take, for example, the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, Babylon's Hanging Gardens, the Library at Alexandria, the Parthenon, the Great Wall, the Taj Mahal, Macchu Picchu, Angkor Wat, the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Chunnel, the Itaipu Dam, the Porcelain Tower Pagoda, even the entire body of Greek and Chinese statuary, the civil engineering of cities like Tokyo and Manhattan, jet planes, artificial hearts, satellites, samurai swords, the printing press, electric lighting, plumbing!! Where you see predictability, banality, and ugliness, I see the triumph of man's culminated intellect and understanding of the universe over the savage, atavistic jungle. Even this beautiful reserve", she gestured outward, "was an afterthought, a man-created botanical and arboreal preserve, where each tree, bush, and flower exists because that is where it was placed by human hands. But more than that!", she cried, her cheeks flushing, her body becoming animated with passion, "More than that, there's all we are! Humans are unique amongst animals in that we can choose to defy our instincts, that we learn for no other reason but to learn! The fact that we read, love, make art, argue, work, shop, chronicle our existence, build structures to shield us from the jungle, to conquer it, subjugate it, bend it to our will, there's beauty in all these things, just like there's bitter, painful beauty in the fact that eventually, it all falls, that we can only keep the jungle at bay for so long. This vast spectacle of loss, is it not beautiful, in a way that no lion conquering a gazelle or hurricane uprooting a tree could ever be?"

Regina heaved, having ranted enough. She realised only then that she had stopped entirely in the middle of the arboretum, her arms gesticulating wildly as she lost herself in her monologue, all while Meghan stared back at her with unblinking eyes, her impish mouth parted just slightly in a frozen relief of overwhelmed confusion. Regina looked back at her, and her face fell, taking on a maudlin, apologetic tone, the colour draining slightly from her ruddy cheeks, and she finished her thought, speaking calmly, moderately. "The jungle has to it a beauty of it's own, but even with its capriciousness and savagery, it has to it its own sense of order. Everything that lives now lives because it plays by the rules, scratching out a niche in some great planetary game of Prisoner's Dilemma, fulfilling a role, serving a purpose, abiding the law of the jungle." She paused, and a thought occurred to her, as she tied the conversation back to Neil. "Maybe...", she paused, genuinely reflective, "Maybe Neil is the jungle, and I am the city. I don't know."

A lump erupted in Regina's throat, and she realised, again, who she was speaking to. "I'm sorry, Meghan. I didn't mean to get so combative, there. I...just had to think some things through." She placed a warm hand on the girl's cold, smooth shoulder and apologised again, nudging her in the direction of the campus as they began to walk again.

[Mithril]

Don't hold back, Meghan thought, tell me how you really feel.

For an awkwardly long time Meghan stood very still and stared at Regina.

"Okay, I was wrong," Meghan said neutrally, turning back to the direction they'd been walking. "Forget I mentioned it."

Meghan changed the subject: "So, since you've erupted, have you met many novas?" She'd said it to Regina as if their previous exchange had never happened at all. However, a very small yet nonetheless detectable trace of levity had leached from of her tone of voice.

[Regina Newcastle]

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!! Couldn't shut your bloody mouth, could you, you idiot!? What the hell is wrong with you, Regina? Is expressing your vaunted bloody opinions really worth alienating everyone, even the people who reach out to you!? Sure'n keep it up! Go ahead, die alone, you silly twat! I hope knowing more than everyone else is of some comfort to you when you're a feckin' brain in a jar!

Regina sighed heavily, her features dropping noticeably. She had impotently hoped that perhaps her bizarre passion would be infectious, but she didn't need to read Meghan to see that she had overstepped herself considerably. Regina hadn't even the will left to manipulate her own brain into better spirits, something that normally took her not so much effort as blinking an eye. "Not terribly", she uttered defeatedly. "You're the fourth." She paused, grimacing out "Fifth. You, Crimson Dwarf, Professor Lee Jones, Wakinyan", she very nearly spat out the last name on the list, "and some other fellow, nobody you've ever heard of, I'd think." And the last thing she said was quiet, barely a whisper, but it etched painful memories on her face as plain as the erosion on the face of the sphinx.

[Mithril]

Meghan walked in silence for a moment, and hoped that her calm expression would mask her racing thoughts.

So she's apparently had bad experiences with novas, and we disagree about Neil. Hum.

Meghan smiled wryly.

"Maybe you should pick the next topic," Meghan suggested. "I'm stumped."

[Regina Newcastle]

"As you may've guessed, I'm not exactly the most conversational duck in the pond." Regina was despondent, so much so that she could no longer be bothered to focus on Meghans actions. She felt herself creeping inward and not doing anything to stop it. "It seems all I talk about anymore is academics, debating this or that. And really, it's all I know. I don't really get out all that much. No friends to speak of, no real time for hobbies or creativity. And most frequently, I'm absorbed in my work. I hate to disappoint you after having come so far... I had hoped somehow that once you got here, I'd be able to muster up some heretofore unknown font of personality, but it just isn't there, I don't think." Regina's head drooped, hang-dog. "I guess the truth is that I'm exactly as boring as everybody thinks I am."

[Mithril]

"Do you want to be boring?" Meghan asked. Before Regina could reply, Meghan barreled onward. "Seriously. You're a fucking nova hon. Nobody is going to come around and give you permission to enjoy your life and have a good time. It's up to you to take it upon yourself to do so."

After two weeks in the air, the last thing Meghan wanted to do was to fly again. Still, it was the best way she knew to show Regina a different perspective.

"Do you trust me?" Meghan asked, seriously, but with a smile. "I want to show you something."

She held out her hand to Regina.

[Regina Newcastle]

'Apprehensive' didn't begin to cover it. Not because she didn't trust Meghan; for reasons she couldn't qualify, she found herself doing just that. It wasn't Meghan, it was what she represented, what she was offering. Regina had no idea what Meghan had in mind, but she could see that she had something in mind, something that might make things shift uncomofortably. The nature of scientific inquiry, she told herself, is the willingness to embrace and study new phenomena. Still, she felt afraid.

Cautiously, slowly, her eyes shining with what may have been tears welling, she extended her hand. She couldn't say a word, only look back at Meghan, her head sunk into her shoulders like a dog that had just been chastised.

It took what seemed like an eternity, but at last, Regina's hand met Meghans, and she clutched it tightly. "Show me."

[Mithril]

"All right," Meghan said excitedly, glad that Regina had chosen to trust her. With the practiced ease of someone who was used to touching others, Meghan held Regina's hand high over their heads and pirouetted behind her, as if in an impromptu dance. As she twirled, she willed her weight to reduce, until she weighed no more than a textbook.

Meghan stopped behind Regina, facing Regina's back. Perhaps a bit more seductively than necessary she released Regina's hand and slid her fingers up her arm until her forearm lay over Regina's shoulder. Without waiting for a reaction, she draped her other arm over Regina's other shoulder and knitted her fingers together.

"Hold very still," Meghan whispered, allowing her body to become infinitely malleable. She felt her body flow and assume a new shape, one she'd not tried before. Her fingers and arms fused into a kind of shoulder harness, and she wrapped her legs around Regina's waist. Her legs rapidly melted away into a slim waist strap, and Regina found herself wearing a pair of shimmering titanium falcon's wings, which spanned nearly twenty feet. No trace of Meghan's old form remained at all. A bystander would have seen only a surprised-looking bespectacled young woman wearing a pair of impossibly long and elegant metallic wings on a slim harness.

"Ready?" Meghan asked. Her voice seemed to be right in Regina's ear-- not loud, but as if Meghan were still standing there in human guise.

[Regina Newcastle]

A lump welled up in Regina's throat as Meghan danced around her, and a blush erupted from her cheeks as the young girl began to slide her graceful hands up her arms, momentarily unsure of what manner of delight she aimed to "show" her. Regina would have lodged protest if it had been anyone else, but instead, her heart leapt, and before she could catch her breath, she found herself engulfed in Meghan's body as the words "Holdy very still" reached her ears. She couldn't have done otherwise if she tried.

A gasp escaped Regina's lips as Meghan's body began to warp and mold around her, encompassing her waist and shoulders. Her eyes shot open in mute shock, and her mouth stayed agape, as if she'd just been plunged into an icy cold bath. She was at once panicking and felt very, very nice. The experience was alien, but not alien like intimacy usually was to her, and without a doubt, this felt intimate.

"Ready?", she could hear as though it were right next to her.

Her mouth still open halfway in shock, she inhaled deeply through her nostrils, and nodded her head slowly, obviously frightened, exhilarated. "Mmm hmm..." she whimpered out. "R-ready. I think?"

[Mithril]

"Then here we go!" Meghan replied, abusing a tired cliche. With powerful sweeps of the blue-grey metallic wings, Meghan and Regina lifted gracefully from the walkway, raising a small cloud of dust and fallen leaves in the downdraft. Rising vertically past the treetops, Meghan wheeled through a steep turn, scanning in all directions. She quickly spotted the train station and the way that they had come.

In the other direction lay what Meghan guessed was Oxford proper, and the neighborhood surrounding the storied university. She flew in that direction, picking up speed as she went. With the additional speed, the falcon-shaped wings became more maneuverable and responsive. Meghan quickly became acclimated to the feel of flying not as a bird, but as a pair of wings worn on another's back. Skimming the treetops, and then pulling into a sudden climb over the university, Meghan whooped in delight.

"So, is that your school down there?" Meghan shouted.

On the ground below and from a score of windows, astonished bystanders looked upward in surprise. Some pointed, and some more alert people held their camera-phones aloft, hoping to capture a shot of England's newest unidentified flying object.

[Regina Newcastle]

Regina was exhilirated. She'd given thought to the idea of allowing herself to fly, but her wildest expectations of the experience paled to the real thing. This was bloody brilliant. It was magical, she thought, though the word caught in her head like a thorn. At first, the sensation of being lifted off the ground gave her a start, but quickly, the fear was replaced by a rush of adrenaline, the wind whipping streaks through her hair, the fleshy warmth of her strange and wonderful vehicle, the sensation of weightlessness, of flight, consumed her completely.

Meghan shouted to her, but it wasn't necessary. Even over the wind, she could hear her just fine.

Regina just nodded happily, eyes still open wide, the barest hint of a smile beginning to show itself on her gaped mouth. I am definetely doing this again, she thought to herself. For a moment, she couldn't be buggered to compute velocity or barometric pressure or quantum effectiveness or read the emotions of everyone around her. For a moment, she was flying, and close to someone, and it was wonderful.

[Mithril]

She's not got a lot to say, Meghan thought. Guess I'll just circle a bit and see what develops.

Meghan decided to restrain herself and avoid any extreme aerobatics to avoid unduly frightening her passenger. Together the two novas lazily and randomly circled the Oxford campus and the surrounding neighborhood.

"Is there anything I can show you while we're up here?" Meghan asked conversationally, no longer straining to be heard over the wind. After a pause she continued: "I'm at loose ends myself, so we can go wherever."

[Regina Newcastle]

Regina was still a little afraid. She'd been thrust into the utter inhumanity of her state for the second time. There was nothing subtle about flying. She could ignore the workings of her own mind, buzzing and chattering constantly with thoughts and equations, and she could sublimate the way in which she understood so easily what others kept writhing beneath the skin. But feeling the cool air on her, weightless, so high above it all, she was hit with the unreality of what she was, and it temporarily rendered her speechless.

Meghan's voice resonating in her ear brought her out of her awe-induced fugue. "Is there anything I can show you while we're up here?"

Regina blinked down at the ground below, finally waking again to reality.

After a moment of silence, Meghan continued, "I'm at loose ends myself, so we can go wherever."

"Meghan, I'm sorry, I just...this is bloody marvelous!" She was smiling now, to her surprise. "I don't mean to be coarse, but...do you suppose that maybe...we could...say...that is..."

Meghan muttered a query as Regina swallowed hard.

A laugh erupted from Regina's throat, one that was distinctly all her own. It was light and musical and happy like that of a young child unfettered by problems or concerns. It almost seemed alien coming from her, save for that such a noise couldn't have been made by anybody else. "Could we fly low and fast and scare the bloody knickers off somebody? Oh, oh! And after that, I want to see what else you can do!

"Will you show me?!"

[Mithril]

Meghan laughed, harder than she had laughed in days, and especially harder than since she'd arrived in England. The change in Regina's demeanor delighted her, and she was relieved to see that her gambit had worked. Meghan had been considering whether or not to ditch Regina and go have a good time with someone who was capable of having a good time. That idea was set aside, hopefully soon to be forgotten.

Meghan scanned the crowd below, looking for a likely target to buzz. There, on the street corner, she found one.

"You bet I'll show you!" Meghan shouted (unnecessarily) to Regina. Meghan swooped upward, trading speed for altitude. At the apex, she dropped into a vertical dive, wings swept back. Below them on a streetcorner, a white and blue police sedan idled with the door open. As they plunged, a police officer emerged from the sedan, intent on her duties.

"God save the Queen!" Meghan shouted in delight as she and Regina pulled out of the dive mere feet from the pavement, barely avoiding a collision with one of Oxford's finest.

"Jesus Christ!" shouted the copper as she dove back into her auto. Through the back glass she saw Meghan and Regina recede into the distance, buzzing down the High Street no higher than the awnings which lined the street, spreading panic in their wake.

After creating inspired mayhem for a few blocks, Meghan pulled into another climb and performed a lazy Immelman, reversing course and taking a moment to inspect the chaos they'd left in their wake.

"Is this more what you had in mind?" she asked Regina.

[Regina Newcastle]

Regina felt a twinge of despair creep over her as Meghan's thoughts infected her head briefly, but were almost as quickly forgotten. If Meghan was having a good time, then damn it all, she could, too. The moment passed, and she smiled, exhilirated, as Meghan shouted her reply, taking her even higher than before, at last cresting into a magnificent, bullet-straight dive towards a bobbie getting out of her car. Regina winced inwardly for a moment, unsure of Meghan's somewhat dangerous choice, before concluding with an internal giggle, "Sod it. This is how novas have fun, ennit?"

Nearly knocking the copper flat on her arse, Meghan and Regina swooped away, laughing madly at their inspired sport as they repeated it a dozen more times, swooping low to startle the pedestrians they passed, some of whom Regina knew from school. She'd never see the end of queer looks from her schoolmates for this, but bollocks to all that. She hadn't had such a glood laugh in a long time, nor had as much fun.

She was enchanted.

"Is this more what you had in mind?" Meghan asked her.

Regina giggled uncontrollably. "Yes!", she shouted over the wind, a bit louder than was necessary. "Yes! Oh, Meghan, I'm having so much fun! I can't do anything like this with my powers. This is fantastic!" Her voice got somewhat quieter, but still loud enough for Meghan to hear her. "You're fantastic. I'm really quite boring. I guess my powers compliment me well in that regard." She didn't seem despondent in saying it, simply resigned to her lot. She sighed, happily, the air wafting through her tousled grey hair.

[Mithril]

Meghan carried Regina down the High Street at head height, dodging and weaving madly through traffic, signposts, and utility lines. As she flew, she considered what Regina had just said. If she cared about the chaos she was leaving in their wake, it was not evident in her demeanor.

"Your powers are boring like you are?" Meghan asked. "How is that possible? For nova powers to be boring, I mean. What do you do?"

Meghan bobbed over the crenellated roofline of a dormitory and dodged a heating stack and scattered an immense flock of pigeons before diving down the other side of the building into a courtyard.

Maybe she's like Edison, Meghan mused.

[Regina Newcastle]

Meghan and Regina wafted down into a neat little courtyard as gentle as a feather, shades of Mary Poppins. Regina had been a bit dumbstruck by Meghan's inquiry. She, of course, had some idea of what her quantum endowments did, but she had thus far remained rather mum about them. The only time she had consciously used her powers had been to hurt - no, eternally cripple, very nearly kill - another person, and a nova, at that. Regina didn't much like to think about what she could do, let alone talk about it. To put it plainly, her own powers frightened her immensely.

"I, um...well...could we sit down, a moment?"

With a slick movement, Meghan's body slid off Regina's like a liquid cowl, leaving a trail of goosebumps on Regina's skin wherever she crossed it as she pooled into a smooth, surfaceless spheroid of reflective metal and then, just as seamlessly, returned to the form Regina was more familiar with. "Sure", Regina heard the voice echo in her ears as Meghan's body took shape.

They stepped to a nearby bench and sat, concern clearly written on Regina's face. She pressed her coat against the back of her knees as she sat, then folded her hands into her lap, which her eyes indicated she suddenly found particularly interesting. Meghan sat opposite her, clearly still expecting her answer, since Regina had so boldly asserted that her powers were "boring". The worry that had taken her over left her even more intrigued.

"I play with genes", she finally sighed out, maybe a little too fast. Her teeth found her the corner of her lower lip as she struggled to put it into words that would make sense. "I...do things to bodies, I suppose you could say. You know...like...increase or decrease adrenaline levels, influence heartrate or breathing, cause sleep, things like that." She looked around the courtyard for a moment pensively, as if looking for any intruding ears, and continued in hushed and slow tones, "I can also...umm...alter a creature's genetic sequence. Say...give someone a gene that would predispose them towards heart disease, or take the same thing away, you know, convert the code to another one of the billions of selfish DNA clusters that don't do anything. I could...probably do more. I know I could. Daft stuff."

She paused, looking around again, still wary, and hung her head again. "Really quite boring."

[Mithril]

Oh, crap, Meghan thought despondently, she really is as boring as she thinks. Meghan leaned forward on her bench opposite Regina's, and supported her chin in her hands, with her elbows on her knees. For a long moment, she watched Regina, who seemed intent on staring at her own lap.

"Yeah," Meghan said, slowly drawing out the word to break the awkward silence gently. "I'm embarassed to admit it, but I'm kind of boring too. At least, I was until I erupted. Even now, though, the only interesting things about me are my nova abilities. I spent the first three months as a nova crashed out on Flicker's sofa playing video games or surfing the OpNet. When I was still human, I kept to myself and read a lot."

"I guess I'm trying to say that I don't know much about so-called 'normal' kinds of fun," Meghan continued, wringing her hands together and shifting her weight. "Socializing, dancing, going to clubs, and stuff like that is pretty alien to me. At the rate I'm going, I don't think I ever will figure it out. Hell, I carry on like I'm not human, which is true to a point, but there are vestiges of it left inside me, but fewer and fewer every day."

Meghan paused to collect her thoughts before she continued, and she found her gaze drifting into her own lap.

"It's slipping away, my humanity I mean, and the scary part is that while I know it's going and that I ought to be concerned, I'm not. The ability to give a shit about it is just gone. So this makes me a really, really bad 'fun mentor,' I'm afraid."

[Regina Newcastle]

Listening patiently to what Meghan had to say, Regina blinked for a moment, as if brought out of some manner of emotional fugue. She looked up at Meghan, now mirroring the expression Regina herself wore a moment before, her face contorting into incredulous shock. "You?", she blurted out as if Meghan had just told her that she owned the world's largest collection of crisps that look like celebrities or was the world's foremost philatelist. "You don't know how to have fun? Meghan," she scoffed, becoming suddenly happy with fond memories of ten minutes ago, "you're the bloody Queen of Fun! Are you having a laugh on me? You're bloody brilliant! You laugh, you fly across the bloody ocean on a whim, you show up in England just to hang out with a depressing and disappointing bint like me..." She sighed, shaking her head, exasperated, still smiling. "I think you're marvelous fun. Maybe that says something about me."

Meghan lost interest in her lap, looking up at Regina, who was now comically animated with concern for her. Her face reflected nothing.

Regina coughed somewhat nervously and furrowed her brow, now that Meghan was looking back at her. "I...I know what you mean, though, about that other bit. You probably don't see it, but I feel really seperate too, you know? Not that I was ever Miss Popularity, but now...well...there isn't really anybody I can relate to. The normal kids here, they buzz around me now because I'm a nova, they hope that I'll somehow advance them or use my powers to make their lives perfect. But I can't do that. Even if I gave every bloke on campus a ten-inch banger - and I could - it wouldn't make their lives perfect, and what would they do with it, even if I could?" She threw her hands up in frustration. "The truth is, I've never much felt human, and now I feel less human than ever before. I'm sure it's not the same for you, since your divorce from humanity proper is so visceral, so physical, but my alienation is no less real...that feeling of who you were slipping away...that strange ennui of not even caring..."

[Mithril]

Well, that's one thing we have in common, Meghan thought.

"Okay, we're both losing touch with Humanity. I'm not sure what more there is to say about that," Meghan began.

Meghan sat a little straighter, pushing herself forward on the bench with her arms. "I have a weird request to make," Meghan said cautiously. "I set out on this world tour to meet other novas and see how they live and learn their philosophies, but I'm pretty selfish, too. A big part of it was that I wanted to learn more about myself and who I am and what I am."

Meghan looked at her smooth metal hands which lacked details like fingernails. "If you can look into a being's very body processes and alter them, that means that surely you can first read them, right?"

[Regina Newcastle]

Regina nodded emphatically, "No, no! It's quite alright, really! There's nothing selfish about wanting to understand yourself. That only makes good sense. The more one understands themself, the more accurate a litmus one has for their own behavior and how to interact with the world. I'd be happy to tell you anything I can find out about you." She breathed a slightly heavy breath, barely noticable, and added "I'll, um...have to touch you, though. Is...is that alright?"

Meghan felt like laughing at her and her ridiculous reservations. Regina wasn't asking to "touch" her, she was saying she'd have to place her hands on her. Regina's stodginess bordered on being asinine. Meghan smiled softly, "Well, yes, of course."

Regina smiled a bit in return, a pained expression on her face. She realized she was being unnecessarily clinical, but she was less afraid of seeming too formal than she was of being accused of taking liberties with Meghan's vulnerability. She bowed her head like a whipped dog before replying, "I...we should do this back in my room. It would be...awkward, if someone walked by. Agreed?"

Meghan nodded, mostly in deference to Regina's comfort. She didn't much care what anybody saw or thought, but Regina wasn't so far from human that it didn't matter to her. Oh, well. She has to live here, after all. It's not as if she can just leave if things became inconvenient. "Sure", she said, standing up. "This way, right?"

Meghan lead the way back to Regina's dorm room as Regina scrambled to follow. She consciously suppressed her quickening heartrate and the blush that erupted in her cheeks, following along. She began to take mental inventory of the state of her room. She'd cleaned up as she'd been expecting company, but now, seemingly trifling things had become the subjects of intense concern. She found herself craving Meghan's attention and approval, and punishing herself for all her little eccentricities that could prove to be potentially repellant. She questioned why she even cared, and reminded herself - without thinking otherwise on the matter - that she cared because she liked Meghan, because she couldn't remember the last time she'd been this interested in another person. Her brain's shadow reminded her that she was still in denial about that, but truth, as always, had at last won out, and she silently admitted to herself that she was deeply attracted to Meghan. And oh sweet bloody hell, she did not want to look like the completely dull nerd that she knew she was in front of her. Too late for that; Meghan was about to behold the inner sanctum of a super-genius in all it's spectacular, geeky majesty, from her signed copy of 'Origin of Species' to her 'Small Favors' trade paperbacks. She inwardly cringed.

She was screwed.

They reached Regina's flat in only a few moments, not a lot being said en route, save for a few slowly muttered, meaningless expletives meant to keep the silence from overtaking them completely. Regina flashed a fob pass into a dormitory that was laid out like a very modest apartment complex of file shelving for the lives of academics and down a carpeted, threadbare hallway lit by sickly yellow lights to the last room on the right hand side, marked only with a post label that read 'NEWCASTLE'. The hallway was empty, all the doors that lined it shut tightly. Regina unlocked the deadbolt on her room and opened the door, allowing Meghan to slip past her first. Meghan beheld the sight before her.

The room was a tidy albeit voluminous affair. Most of the walls had been covered in shelves of books, and in this modest cubicle, little more than a square with two windows attached to a water closet, there were probably some several thousand such volumes. The side near the window had been cleared to accomodate a computer desk with a last-generation laptop sitting atop it, a bed on which conspicuously sat a stuffed lion, and a small end table that held neat-stacked papers and an alarm clock. Posters hung from the ceiling, unable to find room anywhere else. This one of Einstein, that one from 'Revolutionary Girl Utena'. On the desk sat a single, modestly-framed photograph of Regina - here with red hair - standing aside two people easily identified as her parents and an older gentleman, probably pushing seventy, but bearing a distinguished and friendly demeanor. He had his arm around her, in the photograph, as her parents stood to her other side, smiling. She was graduating or receiving some kind of award, no doubt. The whole room was a shrine to geeko-nerddom, with books on science and history and math sharing equal time with collections of comic books, role-playing manuals, collected seasons of television shows on disc and films that the nova age had long forgotten. For Regina, her four walls of media was a haven and heaven, but now, in front of Meghan, she just felt guilty, like her own ability to read people so easily was being thrust back upon her. She felt like a bug under a microscope.

She chuckled nervously. "Well, um, welcome!" She fidgeted with closing the door then gestured towards the chair, "Please, sit, and we'll work on touching you up. Oh, bloody hell, you did not just say that. You did not. I mean...! ... Shite."

[Mithril]

Meghan stopped in the doorway and took a long look around at Regina's massive library. Meghan had been bookish, but not on this scale. Still looking around, she made her way to the chair and sat down distractedly.

"You have a nice place," Meghan said at last, their reason for coming here lost for the moment. "It's not at all like I had expected. In a good way, I mean."

Meghan looked back to Regina to see her reaction, and was surprised to see her staring back with a surprised and pleased expression.

"Anyway," Meghan continued with a smile, "I'm ready for whatever it is you need to do."

[Regina Newcastle]

Regina's eyebrows arched up, and she gulped a sigh of relief. To her great surprise, her rather diverse collection of birth control hadn't turned Meghan off, and happily, she knew she wasn't lying, either. She even seemed to have bore Regina's verbal faux pas in stride, silently wondering at the coy smile that danced on her lips and the heady inferences she attempted to force herself not to draw from her words.

Meghan sat in Regina's swivel chair. Regina slumped down opposite her on her bed, surveying the scene with a quick glance before making a comically bad attempt to snatch up the stuffed animal and hide it behind her back. "Um...yes." She smiled sheepishly, her eyes looking up at Meghan. "Sorry. Now..." Regina reached out with both her hands and gently placed them on Meghan's collar, taking her time to be especially gentle, though more because the whole thing felt so intimate than for fear of being rough with Meghan. Her hands stayed in proximity without touching her for a moment, as if trying to detect warmth coming from her body, and finding nothing, no radiance whatsoever. At last her hands touched Meghan's cool surface, a feeling she'd only experienced briefly before. Gooseflesh ran up her arms again. She inhaled deeply, her features taking on a more serious and scholarly bent that was nevertheless tinged with a sort of childlike, giddy excitation. "I don't have much experience with this, so I can't tell you what it'll be like, but I know it won't hurt. Just remain calm and normal, aces?"

Meghan nodded almost imperceptively in assent.

Shutting her eyes, Regina began to sense Meghan internally, attempting to understand her makeup. Where she expected to find DNA, she instead found a seamless, unbroken, seemingly neverending sequence of molecular bonds, like a diamond. Wherever she looked within Meghan, she found the same thing, whether it was inside her head or her toes. All of her was the same amorphous mass of perfectly uniform molecules, all powered and given animation by ambient quantum that she pulled from all around her the way a plant would photosynthesize sunlight. Regina was concerned - and intrigued - but felt bound to report what she'd found to Meghan accurately, no matter how she'd recieve it. Most curiously of all, she thought she could still influence Meghan with her quantum endowments, DNA or no.

Regina's eyes fluttered open. She felt as though she'd been swimming through Meghan's being for hours, but the clock she consulted told her only a few minutes had passed. Meghan looked back at her as placidly and calmly as before. Without taking her hands away, Regina sniffed slightly, and very quietly addressed Meghan, "What can I tell you?"

[Mithril]

Meghan hadn't expected Regina to ask that question, so she was momentarily taken aback. In her mind's eye, she'd imagined that Regina would emerge from her trance-like state with some kind of surprised exclamation.

"Well," Meghan said, "I guess you could tell me what you found, and how you think I work. I've had this talk with Neil, but he's always so full of techno-speak that I can't make sense of what he's trying to describe. I have a feeling that you're one to speak far more plainly than that." Meghan had intended it as a compliment, and she smiled sincerely for Regina.

[Regina Newcastle]

Regina nodded observantly, pushing her pendulously large glasses back up the bridge of her nose. "Okay, Genie, now's your chance to prove yourself. Tell her the truth and tell it to her straight. She's not a scientist. Explain it like you'd explain it to mum and da."

"Well," she began pensively, suddenly catching herself, interjecting "if I start rabbiting on about things you already know, feel free to interrupt. This is what I've found, though: your entire cellular structure is composed of a totally uniform, homogenous mass of identical cells comprising an element unlike any I've encountered before, and before you ask, I've memorized the Periodic Table in its entirety." She smiled somewhat sheepishly, not sure if what she was about to say would offend. "I'm afraid you're somewhat inaptly named, because whatever you are, it isn't titanium. Your resistance to corrosion exceeds even platinum. Your tensile strength and melting point greatly outstrips titanium. Your relative weight is a spectacular mystery to me; it's as if your own atoms can increase and decrease their relative density, but I'd have to study that process as it happens to be able to see how. As you probably already have guessed, the reason you don't need to eat, sleep, or breathe anymore is because you don't even have internal organs, not even a brain. Literally all of your nervous functions have either been eliminated or are taken care of by the single element that makes you up. In fact, because you are still you and not a faceless, amorphous, mindless blob, it leads me to believe that whatever element you are comprised of is you, and by that I mean that any single part of you is all of you. What is "you" is written into every molecule in your body, in the same way that a person's entire genetic code is written billions of times over into every flake of skin or drop of blood. To put it in human terms, where we have DNA, you have molecular structure. Where we have a subtle electronic impulse animating our corpus, you have ambient quantum that you draw from the environment powering you. In many ways, you're a far more perfect breed than any human or nova. Where we still eat, sleep, itch, breathe, feel pain, and so forth, on account of us needing outside fuel sources to power the impulses and nervous functions that keep us running, you are like a perpetual motion device, able to exist so long as you have a sufficient source of ambient quantum. In short, you very well may exist as long as the universe itself does, so long as even the barest fraction of you remains. You're..." she blinked, finally pausing in the midst of her excited explaining, breathed deeply, and finished, smiling, "pretty effin' amazing, Meghan. Is there anything specific I can tell you?"

[Mithril]

Meghan had suspected that she had become immortal in her new form, but to actually hear it confirmed by an expert was exceedingly delightful. Nevertheless, that delight was overshadowed by an even greater revelation.

"I'm not titanium?" she asked quietly. This, above all other considerations, was her sole focus at the moment. After she'd erupted in March, Meghan had fought to maintain her sanity and to come to terms with her new composition and her bizarre new way of living. She'd nearly failed in this fight and succumbed to madness, and it was not something she ever wanted to revisit. To that end, she'd invested heavily in her titanium identity, latching on to it and abandoning her fleshy one with the desperation of a drowning sailor clinging to a buoy.

Now her buoy was gone, and she needed another one before the waves claimed her. Meghan looked around Regina's library, and recognized many of the titles. As a sullen and lonely teenager, she'd read extensively, living vicariously through the fantastic adventures of mythical characters. Her gaze fell on a well-worn leather-bound edition of The Fellowship of the Ring. She'd read it countless times, and could recite her favorite passages from memory.

Meghan wanted to get this particular passage right, absolutely right, with not one word out of place. She stood from the swivel chair and slid the volume from the shelf. The binding flexed in her grasp, like a living thing, and Meghan smiled to herself, pleased that such volumes still existed. She opened the book in both hands and quickly but delicately flipped through it, skimming familiar words on the pages to find the passage she wanted.

Meghan turned around to face Regina, but her focus was on the printed words.

"The wealth of Moria was not in gold and jewels, the toys of the Dwarves; nor in iron, their servant," Meghan read. "Its worth was ten times that of gold, and now it is beyond price; for little is left above ground, and even the Orcs dare not delve here for it."

Meghan looked up and met Regina's eyes. The rest, she knew by heart:

"Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim."

"I think I need a new name," Meghan said softly.

[Regina Newcastle]

Regina wasn't sure, at first, if she'd just done something wonderful or something terrible. Panic had washed over Meghan in that instant, and Regina could see it plainly, without her quantum endowments. She questioned whether Meghan may have fainted, was such a thing possible. She could read it plainly in her face; I'm terrified. I've lost my anchor, my identity. Confusion, agony, nearly surrender. Regina felt herself misting up, feeling awful for Meghan, feeling hatred and spite for herself at having taken this away from her, desperately trying to share a pittance of the overwhelming sadness that blanketed the room in that still moment.

With a start, Meghan stood up and began to rifle through Regina's shelf of books. Regina sat puzzled for a moment, unsure what had provoked this reaction, but Meghan's body told her that an idea was forming somewhere, some small light flickering on down within the crucible of Meghan's form.

She reached for a well-thumbed copy of 'The Fellowship of the Ring', a volume Regina had read dozens of times as a child, and the same light illuminated Regina's mind. A hesitant, provisional smile began to creep up the sides of Regina's cheeks in a moment of instant understanding, as Meghan searched for a specific passage and began to read aloud.

The words that came out of Meghan's mouth fitted her perfectly. Malleable as copper, polished like glass, lighter and harder than steel, as beautiful as silver, never tarnishing or growing dim. Desired by all. More precious than gold. If ever such a thing existed or could exist in this world, Meghan was it.

"I think I need a new name," Meghan said softly.

Ease returned to Regina's bearing, a sweet joy at having done something useful and good with her abilities. In helping Meghan to better discover herself, she'd been party to giving her a new name, one that she found far more beautiful and befitting Meghan than its predecessor. Meghan's low tone reflected the immensity of what she felt to Regina, who now was brought almost to tears for an altogether different reason. She wanted to laugh and shout and tell Meghan how happy she was, but presently, all such tacks seemed woefully inadequate.

Regina swallowed hard, fear sending a chill through her body, reached out to Meghan, embracing her in her arms, and with a deep breath, leaned forward and placed her lips on Meghans.