Something brought Sam towards wakefulness. Without moving on her cot, she let her eyelids part to slim slits. Cassandane sat before the desk, focused intently on her own arm. As Sam sat up, Cassandane yanked her sleeve down. "Now that you are awake, Sam, please get ready so that we can begin our day."

Without more than a word or two of complaint, Sam went about her morning preparations. They left the apartment, ate a quick breakfast, and stopped at a warehouse where Cassandane signed out a tablet computer that she handed over to a surprised Sam. Then they continued on for another day of transporting cargo. While they descended, Sam played with her new device. The touchscreen interface continuously read her fingerprint as she interacted with it, making it both highly secure and easily accessible. After receiving alerts from the various functions about a lack of network connectivity, no doubt caused by their absense from the Angelship, Sam opened up a word processor function and wrote out a quick overview of what she had learned of the talents since Cassandane began teaching her.

Pure Talents

Nous - Noetic talent.

Animas - Kinetic talent.

Gravitas - Teleotic talent.

Mixed Talents (synergies)

Nous + some Animas - Mindbind.

Nous + some Gravitas - Agents.

Animas + some Nous - Continuous effect kinetic field.

Animas + some Gravitas - Energy manipulation.

Gravitas + some Nous - Process manipulation.

Gravitas + some Animas - Psuedo material constructs.

Nous + Animas + Gravitas - Clearing.

Sam still wasn't clear on what all the synergies did. She knew that mindbinding connected to another person's mind, had a short effective range, and allowed for a crude reading of surface thoughts. She knew agents were mental constructs that could mind control a victim. She knew that a continuous effect field would cause an object to continue accelarating in a direction determined by its internal orientation. She knew that energy manipulation created light of various colors. She knew that pseudo material constructs were temporary physical objects. But she didn't know what process manipulation or clearing were, other than brief comments from Cassandane that brought her more confusion than understanding.

"So what is clearing again? You said it was reacting precursor residue together, but I don't know what that means."

Cassandane glanced over. "Clearing is what prevents a paragon from losing their talents over time. You react the residue together to get rid of it."

"That's it?" Considering the fact that clearing combined all three precursors, she had expected more from it.

"Not having an expiration date for your talents is the single greatest ability I could think of. Though technically a synergy is using one talent to influence the expression of another talent, which makes clearing a separate category. You should update your list to reflect that."

Sam made the reverse pinch gesture she had seen other people use on the Angelship to expand the space between her line for clearing and the other items above it. "What should I call its category?"

"I prefer the term 'interactions'. Recently 'benefits' has become a popular rebranding. I think because non-paragons are under the impression that clearing is a happy effect that just happens."

"What about process manipulation?"

"Exactly as it sounds. Noetic influence allows a teleotic effect to happen over time. Instead of simply increasing the probability of a specific pattern of matter happening, an ongoing process can be effected."

Sam stared at Cassandane. "Could you give me an example of what you would use that for?"

"The textbook example is inducing an electrical current. The teleotic talent in isolation could not do that. Modulate it with a touch of nous, though, and you can cause electrons to traverse a course."

"That doesn't sound very useful when you can just spin a generator to make electric."

Cassandane nodded. "The example of a worthwhile, but orders more difficult, use is controlling the immune response to either steer antibodies to or away from their targets. I have spent some time investigating the potential of increasing longevity through process manipulation at the cellular level. More recently, I have begun looking at the ability to survive without oxygen."

Sam looked up from her tablet. "Survive without oxygen?"

"Yes."

"Of all things, why would you look into that?"

Cassandane's lips compressed into almost a pout. "Someone managed to do something I hadn't thought possible."

"Someone kicked the oxygen habit?"

"Short term."

Sam played around with her tablet some more before the silence began to weigh on her. "Cassandane, is there some reason to keep this a secret from me?"

A sigh came from the other woman. "Not particularly, Sam. Someone recently abandoned the fleet in an unexpected way. He went through an airlock without a suit and jumped to your Earth."

"Oh," Sam said. "Surviving without oxygen sounds a lot more impressive when you know the context."

"Indeed."

"So how did he do it?"

"I don't know," Cassandane said.

"But you have theories?"

"I do."

"Maybe he broke up the carbon dioxide in his lungs to oxygen and elemental carbon. If he used kinesis to keep air in his lungs, that could work for a while."

"No," Cassandane said. "Coating the lungs with a lining of carbon dust would be problematic on its own, but the real issue with that approach is that it would not provide enough oxygen for the trip."

"Maybe it wasn't the lungs, then. Why not split water in the blood to get oxygen?"

"That would cause even more problems from rogue oxygen and hydrogen reacting with bodily tissues. Water is far too prevalent in the human body for it to be a safe target for process manipulation."

Sam shrugged. "Then what do you think he did?"

At first it seemed Cassandane would not reply. Then the woman's dappled features became animated in a way Sam had never seen before. "He had to have altered the chemical reactions involved in cellular energy systems. The body doesn't directly use oxygen for energy production. It uses adenosine tri-phosphate, which can be produced by three separate processes. The main process is aerobic, combining oxygen and glucose in the mitochondria to slap an extra phosphate group onto adenosine di-phosphate. The transformation of ADP to ATP is also done by the lactic acid system and the creatine phosphate system, but those processes rely upon the aerobic system to eventually recharge them. I think Marius hacked one of those systems to recharge without relying upon oxygen.

"My original idea had been to directly catalyze ADP back to ATP, but that would prevent the release of energy from ATP losing a phosphate group. You have to approach problems like this indirectly. In this case, my reasoning points to lowering the energy required to bind a loose phosphate group to a creatine molecule. That would reload the creatine phosphate system so that it can once more donate a phosphate to ADP. The problem once more becomes releasing that phosphate to create ATP -- by increasing the probability of a phosphate group combining with a creatine molecule, you have made it unlikely for that phosphate group to be released.

"Unless you treat it as a process happening to an individual phosphate. Free phosphate binds to creatine in step one. Bound phosphate jumps to ADP in step two. The cellular mechanisms pop off a phosphate group from the ATP molecule to carry out basic metabolic processes, freeing that phosphate to rejoin the process. I have been pondering this for months and I can't see a reason why it wouldn't work. The question becomes: would it work fast enough to match bodily demand? If so, then it would require serious dedication to train and test the method.

"But it could also be the anaerobic lactate system. Without oxygen, glucose can be converted to pyruvate, and then to lactic acid. If Marius closed the loop with a process to convert lactic acid back to glucose -- without altering the probability of the pyruvate step -- then that could work. Again, the question becomes how efficient would it be. The two methods might need combined if neither provides sufficient energy." Cassandane's eyes were bright and her skin flushed with excitement.

Sam couldn't help smiling. "You really love this kind of thing."

Cassandane shrugged. "It's an artifact of my breeding. Aoleyens are generally more intelligent than the average population, but our true strength is our tendency to fixate on a subject. My mother was a renowned mathematician. My father was a materials scientist. I knew that I could never match either of my parents in their respective fields, so I decided to pursue my own path."

"Well, I'm proud to be learning the talents from the best."

"Then show it by being a better student. You still haven't managed to manifest pseudo-matter."

Sam rolled her eyes. So much for exchanging compliments.