clever things with the subsonic inducer that Jason had given him.

"You know, I think I've figured out how you think this stuff up," Ailan had confided last week, as they went over his project after Jason brought it in to show him, his one and only chance to have the instructor check his project. "You come into this with absolutely no pre-conceived notions. You have a fresh outlook on things, you know? I almost envy you for that, you know."

"All you have to do is open your eyes and look at things, Ailan," Jason chuckled.

"Yes, but you see, I have years of training jading my point of view," he answered. "You _don't_. You look at something and see something I never considered, because your lack of training lets you approach it from an angle I wouldn't consider."

"You might be right," Jason had acceded.

That was a pretty interesting point, Jason had to agree. Jason _didn't_ come into this thinking in only one manner, because it was all so new to him. He saw something and immediately his mind started thinking of how it could be used, without knowing what it really _could_ be used for. That let him see a way to use something that Ailan might not, because he'd discount that to be used in that manner, or ignore it because something else also did that.

The railgun was a perfect example of that. No Faey would think of something like that, because it seemed _primitive_ in the age of energy weapons. But in its own way, Jason's railgun was the equal of any MPAC in production, it just worked in a different way. If he could ever get the damn thing to _work_, anyway.

Caffeine. He needed caffeine. Jason backed his chair away from the desk, where a five line calculus problem harangued him from the display on his panel, then scrubbed his face with his hands and lightly slapped his cheeks. It was four in the morning, but he'd been up since two, unable to sleep. He had no classes today; in fact, he had no classes until Monday, when their finals began. All week he'd only had one scheduled class, his project turn in with Ailan. All other classes were cancelled, but the teachers remained in their classrooms during the normal class hours to answer questions or tutor any student who wanted help. Despite no classes on the schedule, almost every student had been on campus every day all week, studying in class to ask questions, studying in the library, on the green, in the halls of the Plaid, out in Audubon park, virtually everywhere. The campus had been quiet, subdued, and not a little tense since last Monday.

Everyone was anxious to get it over with. There would be a three week holiday between semesters, and everyone was looking forward to some major decompression. The school wasn't letting everyone just run off, however, nor let them just do nothing but drink beer for three weeks and come back to school trashed. For one, they were being very stingy with travel permits for students, but were much more lenient with granting permits for relatives to come visit _them_. They were also offering several holiday trips to students, field trips to let them see Faey technology in action, and many of them had filled up with volunteers. The most popular trip without a doubt was the one up to a Faey battle cruiser, giving the students the opportunity to tour a military starship. They'd had so many sign up for it that they were going to have to use three shuttles to get them all up to the ship. In addition to the voluntary trips, everyone had a mandatory physical they had to take during the holiday, and everyone also had to attend a mandatory job fair of sorts on campus the week before the next semester, so they could get an idea of the many different professions from which they had to choose, and start working towards trying to qualify for one. They had one every semester, but they all had to go anyway, if only to get updated information about certain choice job fields. Jason felt it was stupid, but it wasn't like he was in a position to do anything about it.

Ailan had bugged him for days about getting on with the ship tour, but Jason had just blown him off, then stated in a casual manner that if he wanted to go visit a starship, he'd just fly up to one. He'd been on one before, after all, even though he'd never gotten out of his skimmer. Ailan had just laughed and admitted that he forgot that Jason had gotten a pilot's license, and happened to own his own airskimmer.

He'd used his money in other ways as well. For one, there was a beat-up old Toyota Corolla sitting out in the student parking lot. It looked like it was about to fall apart, a ratty old rust-colored sedan whose paint color concealed the rust all over the chassis rather well, but Jason wasn't about to flaunt his financial independence on campus. Despite its outward appearance, the car ran well, was very dependable, and it got him to and from Bell Chasse and his airskimmer quite well. Tim had keys for it as well, and they tended to share it, because he went out with Symone so much and it was often hard for her to come get him every time. So he just took the car and went to meet her, with Jason's blessing.

Standing up, Jason opened the small refrigerator crammed up against the side of his bed and grabbed a new soda, then drank about half of it in a single draw. Calculus was kicking his ass, as usual, because the Faey concept of calculus would make Einstein's brain melt. But it was absolutely critical for Faey engineering, for metaphased plasma required massive numbers of variables to be taken into account to mathematically predict the behavior of metaphased plasma in real time. Even though the computers handled those calculations in operating equipment, an engineer had to be capable of the math to deal with some problems, as well as design. So any engineer worth his hair had to be able to handle equations with large numbers of variables. Calculus was, after all, a math that dealt with changes in real time, but the kicker was that these equations dealt with a substance that operated in multiple states of reality, each of which caused changes to every other variable when they changed, including a change to _itself_. An infinitesimal shift in one variable altered every other variable and totally rewrote the entire equation. It was almost maddening. Jason couldn't believe that there were any sane Faey engineers left.

His panel beeped that an incoming call was waiting, so he sat back down and punched it up. Tim's face appeared in the display, his hair a mess and a paper towel to his nose. His nose was bleeding. "I figured you'd be up. Still studying?"

"I slept a bit and got up early. Gone to bed yet?"

"Naw," he answered. "I'm about to though, when this nosebleed stops."

"What happened?"

"I dunno. I just rubbed my nose, and it started bleeding. Guess I hit it just right. What you studying?"

"Calculus." 
Tim winced. "You're braver than I am. I think I'll invent some numbers on the spot and put them on the test. Maybe I can get some points for originality." Jason laughed. "Symone wanted to know if you're free next Saturday for a trip. She saw a TV show about Yellowstone, and now she wants to go."

"Any place cooler than here would make me very happy," he sighed, looking at the heavy condensation on his window. His room was about 65 degrees, and it was about 85 outside, which caused his window to be totally covered in dew. Jason and some of the other people on his floor had something of an ongoing war about the thermostat, because it controlled the temperature on the whole floor. But it had been upwards of 105 during the day with heat indexes of 115, a heat wave even for New Orleans, so they hadn't complained too much lately when Jason turned it down. They'd come to realize that if they let it get really cool in the rooms at night, it didn't get too hot once the doors started to fan and let that blistering heat inside during the day. "It was nice to be out in the snow again, when we went to Argentina."

"I thought Jyslin was going to kill you," Tim laughed. "She's a good skier, though, I'll give her that."

"She spent her teen years on an arctic planet. There wasn't much more to do than ski," Jason chuckled. "That's why she hates the cold."

"So, you're in for Yellowstone?"

"Yeah, but I'm not paying the parking fees this time," he warned. "If Symone wants to go, fine, I'll take her. But she's responsible for paying to park the skimmer."

"I'll warn her," he said with a grin. "How much do they usually run?"

"Depends on the airfield, but usually no more than 30 credits. Oh, have her check and see if there's skimmer parking in the park itself. It might be more expensive, but it saves us from having to get a cab or take the airbikes."

"I'll tell her. Well, think this nosebleed's about over, so I'm going to bed. See you in class tomorrow."

"Don't oversleep."

"You won't let me," he said, then ended the call.

Jason blew out his breath as his calculus problem returned to the screen. He couldn't evade it anymore; it was time to get back to work.

                                        * * *

_Koira, 18 Oraa, 4392, Orthodox Calendar_
_Wednesday, 6 July 2007, Native Regional Reckoning_
_New Orleans, Gamia Province, American Sector_

It. Was. _Over_.

Jason came out of Calculus feeling a bit dizzy. That was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the hardest test he had ever, _ever_, taken. One of the questions had 32 independent variables, and took almost a three pages of scribbling to solve. It was the first non-literature course he had ever taken where the number of pages it took to complete the test exceeded the number of questions it contained.

But, they certainly saved the worst test for last, because that was it. He'd taken all the other tests already, and he was done for the semester. Outside of a physical and the job fair, his time was now exclusively his own until August. He intended to spend that time not training with Jyslin either in air conditioning or over at the indoor pool.

Well, and finish the railgun. That little project could now have his undivided attention.

He just felt so, so _free_. He didn't have to get up, he didn't have any homework, he didn't have any tests, all he had was free time. Glorious, wonderful, beloved free time.

He did need to decompress. He felt like someone had just pulled his brain out of his nose with a pair of salad spoons. He didn't want to do anything even remotely resembling rational thought. Problem was, Tim still had 2 more finals to take, so he couldn't really go celebrate with him. Jyslin and Symone were on duty, and he didn't really socialize with anyone outside of them. Jason was an exceedingly private person, and was slow to make new friends. Besides, he'd been too busy to do much socializing.

Without much to do, he dropped his stuff off at his room, then caught a streetcar down to the French Quarter. He went to his favorite bar, Patty O's, and sat out in the courtyard sipping on a daiquiri while listening to jazz music piped in over the bar's audio system. It was exactly what he needed. It was the middle of the day, the place wasn't busy, and it was the perfect place to sit and just unwind after two weeks of hell.

For over an hour, he just sat there nursing his single daiquiri, then sighed and leaned forward in his chair. He couldn't stay idle for long, so he started scribbling some lines of code on a napkin to try to get around the hardware conflict preventing the railgun from working. He went through about four napkins before a shadow blocked the light, and he looked up.

He'd never seen this Faey before. She was very tall, one of the tallest Faey he'd ever seen, with translucent green hair that was long and very straight, tied behind her head in a tail. Unruly bangs hung over her violet eyes, waving every time she moved, and her face and body alike were very narrow. She wore a uniform he'd never seen before, a charcoal gray uniform with a light jacket over a black shirt, and a knee-length skirt. She was carrying a black attach case. He'd become somewhat familiar with Faey military rank, and the silver diamond insignia with a bar under it on her collar denoted her as a Lieutenant Commander. She had an oddly excited look on her face, and she got the initial attempt to scan his surface thoughts out of the way almost immediately, a scan that met nothing but that false front of inane thought that protected him from curious Faey.

"Greetings," she said in very thickly accented English, almost as if she were trying to sing the words. "You are Jason Fox, yes?"

"I am," he said cautiously, in Faey.

"Oh, thank the Trinity!" she said with an explosive sigh, pulling the chair out on the other side of the table and seating herself uninvited. "I'm still having tremendous trouble with English. I did so want to conduct this initial interview in your native language, but I'm very relieved you're willing to use Faey."

"Who are you?" he asked bluntly.

"Lieutenant Commander Lirrin Ulala," she said, extending a blue hand. "And I'm _very_ excited to meet _you_, Jason Fox."

Jason stared at that hand, then met her eyes until she cleared her throat and withdrew it delicately. Jason didn't feel too social at the moment, but on the other hand, he avoided skin to skin contact with Faey at all costs. Their telepathic powers were amplified if they had physical contact, and he couldn't risk that. "Yes, well, please excuse me for inviting myself this way, but I didn't really expect to meet you so soon. I was just touring the French Quarter and stopped here to use the restroom, and happened to spot you from the doorway." She pointed down the hall, to where the rather archaically placed restrooms were located. Patty O's was not restroom friendly. "When I realized I had the good luck to cross paths with you, I couldn't pass it up. It saves me having to call you and disturb you with setting up a formal appointment."

"An appointment for what?"

"I've been sent to interview you and a few other people in several academies on Terra," she answered. I'm a divisional recruitment officer for the Technological Advancement division of the Ministry of Science. You know, Research and Development."

That sent a chill through him. R&amp;D? What did they want with him?

"Why would you come to see me? I'm just a student."

"That's _exactly_ why I came to see you," she chuckled. "My division handles recruiting students into R&amp;D. We oversee academies and, when we see someone who has the test scores to conceivably qualify for R&amp;D, we send someone like me to meet the potential candidate. My job is to educate you about what goes on in R&amp;D, so you might consider it a career choice and actively work towards qualifying for it. I don't have them with me, but I have some literature and some passcodes for you, so you can access the candidate section of R-net, the R&amp;D network. I'd usually give it to you during the interview, but as I said, this wasn't planned." She smiled. "You'll receive some other visits, I'm sure. Anyone who becomes a potential candidate for R&amp;D is also a potential candidate for Black Ops, which is something like the bastard stepchild of R&amp;D. They deal only with developing weapons, arms, armor, that kind of thing. You'll also most likely receive several visits from Naval Engineering, the division of the Royal Navy who designs and build starships.

"Well, I'm not going to intrude myself on your private time any longer. I'll call your panel later and set up a more formal appointment, because it's clear to me that you're trying to relax after your finals. I'll have to request a copy of them and see how well you did," she smiled. "I'm sorry if I disturbed you, Jason. Try not to get _too_ drunk after you finish finals, though I know how hard it is. I seem to have lost track of two or three days after I finished my finals in my last semester before graduation," she laughed.

"It's not much of a bother," he said in a neutral tone.

"I'll probably interview you and the two other people I'm scheduled to meet sometime next week, so please do try to keep that in mind and make no set plans for early next week. I can be quite flexible, but I _would_ prefer to conduct all three interviews quickly, and yours at your _earliest_ convenience."

"Just call me," he said evenly.

"I'll send you a message, since we've already been introduced. I'd like to try for, what do you call it? _Monday_?" she said in English.

"_Monday_ is fine with me." Fine to get it out of the way, so he could immediately forget all about it, he added silently to himself.

"Very good. It was nice to meet you, despite it being quite accidental." She offered her hand again, and her eyes were curiously deliberate.

Jason stared at her hand, then held his hand up defensively. "No offense, but I don't shake hands with Faey," he said quite directly.

"Why is that?"

"Because I know what it means if I do," he said cryptically. That incited an immediate attempt by her to read his surface thoughts, and he put the very reason why out there for her to see, a fear that that touch would let her read every thought in his head, an exaggeration of the truth. He had little doubt that she knew that he was social with a Faey, and that he had an understanding of how their telepathy worked. It wasn't entirely accurate, but to her, it would be accurate enough.

"Fair enough," she said with a nod. "Though you should really be more trusting," she said with a slight smile.

He didn't bother to reply. He watched her walk away with her little black case, and his mind was storming with thought. He had never expected a _personal_ visit from R&amp;D. That was the last thing he ever thought would happen. It frightened him, _deeply_, at the thought that the Imperium knew he existed, but here shows up Lieutenant Commander Ulala, descended from the on high of the Ministry of Science, declaring to him without doubt that he was _not_ anonymous. Maybe they hadn't fixated personal attention on him, but his name was on a list with other students that had the grades that had gotten them noticed.

That scared the socks off of him, because he was _not_ like other students. He had a secret, a dark, terrible, life-altering secret that could get him killed if it became public knowledge. If Commander Ulala had touched him, had used that contact to more sharply gain access to the real workings of his mind, his secret could have been out... and he might very well end up on some Faey dissection table.

That, more than anything, was what he feared the most, and was the primary motivation for him to wash out and get a nice safe job somewhere on Earth. That was what he just couldn't make Jyslin understand. She was under the impression that once she had him trained, that he'd never have to worry about ever being discovered. But he didn't hold the same view, he knew that it would only take the most minor of slips, and then it was over. He didn't want to be around any Faey at all if he could help it, and he would be if he worked for the Imperium. Yes, his primary reasoning was an absolute refusal to aid the Imperium, but there was also the issue of this power that he wasn't supposed to have, and might get him killed if the Imperium discovered that he possessed it.

Pinching his nose between his fingers, he actively suppressed the thoughts of the few people around him. Any time he thought about his rare gift, it caused him to become aware of it, and that led to him opening himself just enough to eavesdrop on the broadcasted thoughts of those people around him. Sometimes it was hard to resist, and that practice had gotten him a reputation for being creepy around the dorm. Jyslin felt that his training was moving along quite well, had declared him proficient in sending, and had been teaching him the basics of psychic combat lately, focusing on defending from another telepath's attack. That was something he needed to learn, just on the off chance that he was discovered, and had to resort to defending himself from another telepath. Jason had tremendous strength with his talent, so much so that only either a very well trained telepath or someone with similar strength, like a Marine, was going to be able to overwhelm his defense. She was teaching him how to attack as well, but the standard Faey methodology for training a telepath focused first on defense, then on attack. It had parallels with the other aspects of the training; first learning how to protect, how to be defensive, and then learning how to be active or offensive. Learn how to protect from unwanted thoughts, then learn how to listen to them. Learn how to block out broadcasted thought, then learn how to burrow into another's mind for information. Learn how to defend, then learn how to attack. Jason was getting pretty good at the defense, but still had much to learn as far as attacking went.

Water under the bridge and all that. He'd just have to endure this official visit from this Lieutenant Commander Ulala, then get on with his life. It wasn't like he was actually going to _be_ in R&amp;D anyway. Next semester, well, the pressure would finally get to him, and he'd crack and do very badly.

By this time next year, he'd be in career training, being taught a specific job, because his time as a student at Tulane would be over.

Until then, he had a problem to solve. He looked down at his napkins and started studying the code once again. Maybe he wasn't being specific enough, or his math was too restrictive. Yes, maybe that was it. Perhaps there was more going on here than he first realized, and he was using the wrong mathematical formulas. Maybe that was preventing the programming from understanding what the weapon's sensors was telling it. Well, bloody hell, he knew everything in the weapon _worked_, he just couldn't get the processor to let the weapon go hot. That was a sensor problem, it had to be. And since he knew that there was nothing wrong with the sensors, that meant that the problem was how the processor was handling the data the sensors were supplying to it.

He picked up his pen and started to scrawl on a napkin, then blew out his breath and flagged the waiter for the check. He needed to write on something better than a napkin to figure this one out.

                                        * * *

Closed up in his room, ignoring the loud, banging music that was rattling the window, Jason was lost in his own little world. It was a world of trinary logic, and it seemed to sing to him this night in a way it had never done so before. He knew he was in the zone, and he couldn't lose it.

His fingers flew on the holographic keyboard before him, as he completely rewrote the code block that dealt with how the processor received data from the sensors, and what that data meant. He referred liberally to several pages of chaotic notes that were spread out around the panel on the desk, hanging from the lamp, taped to the wall, and even set on the bed where he could see them. Several other pages of mathematical calculations were stacked on the floor, as he'd gone over his math to make sure he'd gotten the correct answers (he thought he had, it all matched with previous calculations, and the panel ran the numbers in several simulations and agreed with his results). It was rare for him to have such clarity of thought when it came to programming, for it had always been his weak point. He knew the language, but he just wasn't that good at writing complicated programs. Everything he'd done up to that point didn't require much in the way of complicated programming, maybe only a few hundred lines of code backing up a piece of equipment's hard-encoded operating parameters. But this system had no hard-coding, it was all coming from him, and it had been quite a learning experience to have to build that from scratch.

It took him almost ten hours to build the code and debug it, then compile it. What he got he put on a memory stick, then took down the railgun, powered up the processor, and inserted the stick. The code downloaded, and as it instructed in the first lines, the processor incorporated it into its programming in the proper place, updating its subprocesses and revising its database.

The door opened, but he barely heard it. He saw the display on the side of the railgun read, in yellow English characters, [Updating... ... ]. He had to resist the urge to hold his breath.

"Still working on that thing?" Jyslin asked. Jason glanced back at her and saw she was still in her armor, her MPAC slung over her shoulder with her helmet hanging from the barrel. "How did your tests go? Got your scores yet?" Jyslin always spoke when she visited him in the dorm, _always_. It was part of the masquerade they used to hide his power, for extended bouts of silence or odd speech patterns might draw attention, such as one person answering a question which hadn't been asked. They didn't follow that rule in Jyslin's house, where they sent almost exclusively, both to let him practice and because they both actually preferred it that way. Jason found sending to be much simpler and more effective to use than speaking, for he could send much faster than he could talk, and he never had to worry about whether or not she heard him. It was something of a bitter pill that he actually preferred sending over speaking, but he could only use it with Jyslin and Symone, and never when they were together. Jyslin still didn't know that Symone knew about his talent. That was one secret they both kept from her.

"Hush," he said absently, watching the display. The display blinked. [Updated. Reloading OS.]

"Well?" she asked.

"I haven't looked yet," he told her.

"Phaugh, let me," she said, sliding past him in the cramped room and getting in front of his panel. Her gloved fingers quickly banged out a few commands, and a couple of touches on the display got her the information she wanted. "Wow!" she breathed. "Jason, you got all A's! Your lowest score was a 94! That's _wonderful_!"

[Railgun X-1 OS loaded. Boot Diag] "Whatever," he said without much so much as moving his eyes from the display. A series of alphanumeric characters scrolled across the tiny display, each one denoting that a memory block had been tested and proved either true or false. Then it spat out a sequence of hardware diagnostic test results, as it tested every subsystem for functionality. [Boot Diag complete, Railgun X-1 operational.] scrolled across the display. Each subsystem passed the boot test, he saw as that blinked off, replaced by a visual readout of the number of rounds in the clip. The rounds in the weapon were actually dummy rounds, made of nonmagnetic material, but they did serve to test the ammo counter, and the round would be recognized by the weapon when it was chambered, they just wouldn't fire even if he pulled the trigger, since the magnetic catapult couldn't affect them. "Now, time to roll the dice," he breathed quietly, reaching behind the trigger assembly and flipping the safety selector off.

The display's background color turned from green to red, and the yellow numbers turned white.

The weapon went hot.

"_Yes_!" he hissed triumphantly. "It worked!"

"What worked? It actually got past the safety?" she asked. She looked over his shoulder and saw the red backlit display, then gave a short cry of delight. "I knew you could do it!" she told him, kissing his ear. "When are you going to test it?"

"Tomorrow I guess. I'll take it out somewhere safe and see if it blows up in my hands," he said with a rueful chuckle.

"Well, I have tomorrow off, so I'll come along," she said. "Zora traded days off with me, she needs Friday off because her son's coming in to see her."

"I didn't know she had a son," he said.

She nodded. "He goes to a boarding school on homeworld, a really fancy one," she told him. "Zora puts every credit of her paycheck into that place. Poor girl, I don't think she's eaten a meal outside the chow hall for over a year that wasn't bought for her by someone else. That's why she was so happy about giving you those lessons. She really needed the money. That money got her son here to visit."

"Well, I'm glad she could use it," he mused, putting the safety back on, issuing a few commands on the tiny touch-screen display on the side of the weapon, then setting it back on its rack. He wouldn't power it down, to make sure the code was stable. The weapon's program was in debug mode right now, dumping data back into the memory stick he's put in it, which he could use to analyze the weapon's performance later on.

"So, you wanna go out and celebrate the end of term?" she asked.

"Not tonight," he told her, then he told her about the visit he'd received from the R&amp;D representative. "I'm a little worried about that, but I'm sure it'll pass after she's gone."

"That's no reason not to go out," she said archly, brushing her red hair out of her face. Jason had just idly remarked that he thought she'd be quite lovely with long hair, and she'd started to let it grow out as a result. Faey hair grew almost insanely fast, almost a quarter of an inch a day; Jyslin had been getting it cut once a week before he made that remark. The customary comb-over style was gone now, as she'd let the left side of her hair grow out to the same length as her right, had it cut to even it out, then let that evened hair start to grow longer. It was down to her shoulders now, and it wouldn't stop growing fast until it was halfway down her back. Only then would it slow down to a more _human_ rate of growth. She'd soon have to start tying her hair up in a bun to get it all under her helmet.

"To be honest, I really don't want to go out tonight," he told her. "I can't believe I started working on that thing, but I did. Now that I'm done, I just want to sleep."

She chuckled. "Now that I can understand," she told him. "We'll go out tomorrow, ok?"

"Sure," he said, yawning.

"Get some sleep, baby," she said with a giggle, leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. "I'll come get you tomorrow morning, and we'll see if that contraption of yours works."

"Oh, it'll work. How well is the question," he said confidently.

"Then we'll find out, won't we?" she said with a wink. "Hi Tim," she called as she squeezed past him and sauntered out of his room, then stopped just outside the door. Tim had just appeared at the open doorway, and he looked haggard. "What's wrong?"

"Finals," Tim groaned. "And I've had the kin