"Oh? You're already done?"

Judy looked visibly surprised (by her standards) when I left the infirmary just a few short minutes after entering it.

"I told you I'd be quick," I responded as I threw my bag over my shoulder.

"I thought that you were going to drill Peabody about his involvement with Robatto."

"Nah, it's too early to put direct pressure on him. Not to mention, I don't want him to put Labcoat Guy on guard just yet."

After I told her that, I beckoned for her to follow me. It wasn't exactly prudent to discuss things like this right in front of the man's door, even if I already knew he wasn't eavesdropping due to periodically glancing at him with Far Sight. Speaking of which, I Far Glanced over to the rest of our group, and after observing them a little I said, "It seems things are wrapping up on the others' side as well. No injuries, though the class rep is pretty down. I guess she's disheartened by how accurate my script was."

"She'll get over it."

"I'm sure she will," I responded a little absent-mindedly just around the time we reached the shoe lockers.

"Do you want to go and meet up with them?" Judy questioned me as she passed me by on her way to her own locker, but I shook my head.

"Nah. Didn't we talk about how we should let Josh act independently every once in a while? He is doing good too; he is passive-aggressively heckling Armband Guy like a pro already."

My dear assistant gave me an odd look and said, "I will now graciously avoid the question of why you consider picking fights with vastly more powerful people a good thing, and instead I would like to know why Joshua did so."

"I wouldn't call him 'vastly' more powerful..."

"Chief, please focus on the actual point of the question."

"Right. To answer your query, I'd say it's probably because my description of the conspiracy and him playing along with it left a bad impression on Josh. Either that, or he is miffed by him acting so familiar with the class rep."

"You mean to say he is jealous."

I pondered for a moment on how to answer as I watched her put on her left shoe while hopping on the other foot for some inexplicable reason, but ultimately I simply shrugged my shoulders.

"Maybe? I mean, it can be pretty hard to follow the thought processes of a harem protagonist."

"I can attest to that," she threw an obvious bait my way, but I decided to ignore it, and instead I quickly slipped into my own outdoor shoes.

"Either way, Josh and company are fine, so let's discuss my newest discovery instead."

"Your Phantom Limb's ability to modify enchantments," Judy stated what she thought was obvious, but I shook my head.

"No, Dormouse. That's just the tip of the iceberg."

"Really?"

That comment piqued her interest all right, but before saying anything else, I waved for her to follow me.

"I'll tell you on the way home."

Saying so, I left the school building, with Judy following close behind me, and I only hit up the conversation again once we were already walking downhill.

"Okay, so, do you want to review what we thought my extra limb can do, at the risk of being redundant, or do you want me to cut the chase and tell you the big discovery I made?"

"The latter."

"Too bad, as I'm still going to do it," I told her before I cleared my throat and began to elaborate. "Do you remember what happened the last time I tried to use my Phantom Limb to experiment on my mug?"

"You scared me pretty badly," came the morose answer in return.

"Maybe, but that's not what I'm talking about now. Remember what I told you? About the overlapping mugs and the psychedelic experience surrounding it?"

"Yes," she said, though it was little more than a verbal prompt for me to continue.

"I think I figured out what happened back then. You see, this invisible appendage of mine," I said while waving it in front of me, though she still couldn't see it. "I still don't know where it came from, why I have it, or how it works, but now I know 'what' it does. It is, for lack of better terms, something that lets me interact with the World."

"Chief, that's literally what arms are for," she stated, her voice flat as an ironing board.

There was a snappy comeback right on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it back down and instead I said, "Sorry, I suppose I wasn't clear enough. I meant the word 'World' with a capital 'W'. As in, the simulation or what have you we live in."

"Are you serious?"

I nodded to her, and Judy immediately took out her phone, no doubt in preparation for taking notes, but I stopped her in her tracks.

"Dormouse... just how many times do we have to repeat this conversation? Please don't take notes while we are walking. It's dangerous. When you're not paying attention, you can easily stumble into something or someone."

"Such as those people?"

"What people?"

I followed her eyes, and as I did that, I immediately recognized the silhouettes of a familiar trio.

"Crap!" the shortest member of the Goldfish Poop Gang let out a low hiss the moment our eyes met. "It's him! It's the bully!"

"What do we do, boss? I think he noticed us..."

"Shut up, you scaredy cats!" the big guy with the pompadour to end all pompadours whispered back so loudly he might as well didn't even bother. "Just hold yer heads up and stick to the plan. And remember, don't make eye contact!"

"I think I already did…"

"Then don't do it again! And act casual!"

Saying so, the three of them formed an orderly line and then proceeded to... walk by us without even glancing our way.

We stood in place as they passed us by, and the moment they were behind us, they quickened their pace and soon disappeared behind a nearby corner.

"What was that about?" my girlfriend inquired without even trying to hide the suspicious look in her eyes.

"I'll be damned if I knew," I replied, similarly baffled by the experience.

"One of them said you were a bully," she noted with a hint of unwelcome curiosity in her eyes.

"Must have confused me with someone else," I forcefully stated before pointedly clearing my throat. "Anyhow, let's return to the previous topic, shall we?"

Something told me she was still really curious about what just happened, but she obediently nodded and put her phone away before she asked the pivotal question of the day.

"In that case, please elaborate on how you interacted with the capital 'W'."

"At once," I replied before taking a deep breath to collect my thoughts. I have actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to put my experiences into words even as I was experimenting with the artifacts, yet I still found the prospect exceedingly hard. "Okay, let's start with the basics. As I said, the phantom limb allowed me to peek behind the veil and see things as they are."

"Was there an old man who tried to convince you to ignore the man behind the curtain?"

"No, but I almost wish there was."

"Really?"

"No."

"… Are you sure the 'S' in your nonexistent middle name doesn't stand for 'spoilsport'?"

"Yes, I am. Also please focus." After chiding her, I took a deep breath and began my explanation. "Okay, here's a disclaimer first: Please don't ask about how certain things work or how I figured out what I'm about to explain, because I'd bloody well like to know as well. That said, here is some of what I gathered. First off, let's put one of our old questions to bed; this world is certainly artificial, and more importantly, it is a constructed one."

"Constructed," Judy repeated the word after me, probably to stress its significance. "I would think that means it was constructed by someone."

"Most likely," I granted her that much.

"Could the creator of the world be the source of the narrative?"

"No idea. It could be them, or an autonomous self-correcting system. I don't know yet."

"You said 'them' just now," Judy pointed out my slip of the tongue with the precision of a trained sniffing hound. Or rather, an adorable bloodhound puppy. Doggy analogies aside, I let out a sharp breath before I answered her.

"As I said, don't ask me why, but I have something of a hunch that there are multiple people or beings or whatever running the show from the backstage."

"How many?"

"Idunno… Let's say, more than three but less than five?"

"… So four."

"Maybe? I mean, it could be 3.14 as far as I actually know." At this point I took another huge, dramatic breath and emphatically stated, "Anyways, we are getting off-topic. As I said, I've gained some insight into this world."

"I'm listening," my assistant prompted me, and I obliged.

"First and foremost, this is a world of natural physics, or at least 'natural' in the sense of what you would find in a textbook. Also, on that note, while I cannot rule out the hypothesis that all of this is a simulation in the traditional sense of the word, my foray into reality hacking made me realize that the 'resolution' of everything is insane. It might even actually go down to the atomic level, though I cannot be sure because I had a hard time conceptualizing changes on that scale in motion."

"So you're saying that even if this world really is a simulation of some sorts, on a physical level it's indistinguishable from a non-simulated world."

"Yes, though to be fair, that is a statement philosophers debating the nature of reality could probably argue about for days. Unfortunately, we don't really have the time for that."

"Unfortunately? Does that mean that if we had the time, you would like to talk about it for days?"

"You know what I meant," I told her while suppressing the urge to roll my eyes.

"Understood." Judy's response made me wonder what it was that she 'understood', but ultimately I decided it must have been that I didn't want to get bogged down like that, because she continued by saying, "So if this world is practically indistinguishable from reality on a physical level, then how can we explain placeholder behavior?"

"Beats me," I admitted freely, though it didn't mean I wouldn't attempt a few educated guesses. "Maybe simulating consciousness is harder? Or it could be that the world wasn't designed with simulating people in mind. Or people with minds. Or there could be a completely unrelated reason."

"In short, we don't have enough data to come to a definite conclusion yet."

"Exactly," I agreed with a small nod. "But back to the beginning of our discussion: you remember how I had an adverse reaction to interacting with my cup?"

"To put it mildly," Judy grumbled, but I ignored the edge her voice had lest we would get derailed again.

"So you do. The reason it happened was because changing something directly causes the world itself to push back. Let me give you an analogy: imagine you are at the bottom of a swimming pool."

"Okay."

"Let's say you put your hands together so that you have a ball of water which you want to replace with another ball of water. Are you following me so far?"

"I'm trying to."

"Okay, so, let's say you're really, really fast. Like, Superman on methamphetamines kind of fast. Yet, when you remove the original ball, it naturally leaves behind an empty space. Since it's empty, the water pressure in the pool immediately tries to fill up the space, no matter how fast you are. Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

My girlfriend looked at me oddly for a second and ultimately stated, "… Chief, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I think you're horrible at making analogies."

"Nonsense," I dismissed her out of hand. "Okay, let's try this more directly. The swimming pool is the world. The ball of water is the mug. When I interacted with it, I unknowingly attempted to replace it with another piece of glazed pottery. While both of them are technically the same, the act of changing things disturbs the fabric of the world, and it doesn't like it when it happens one bit. It's doesn't do it consciously though, it's more like how water immediately fills in a hole you try to create in it because of surface tension and pressure. The water doesn't do it to spite your efforts, it's just how it works. So, to stay with my analogy, in order to replace the water ball, I would first have to separate it from the rest of the swimming pool, and while the process lasts, I have to keep the water from pouring in and mixing stuff, because if that happens, it creates waves that others can notice."

"By waves you mean the three-point-fourteen creators," Judy stated with her tongue set in her cheek so hard it almost poked through.

"Yes, I mean them."

"And that would be bad."

"Probably."

Judy let out a soft grunt that I decided to interpret as agreement and cleared my throat before I continued.

"So, in short, using this arm of mine to hack reality is not entirely feasible. I think it could be done, in theory, but it's hard, dangerous, and it makes my head hurt something fierce."

My assistant looked at me expectantly, most likely waiting for me to continue, but when I didn't, she subtly rolled her eyes and said, "All right, I will ask the obvious question. If using your immaterial limb to change objects is unfeasible, then what did you do to the morphers?"

"Thank you for asking!" I responded with gusto before pausing and adding, "Before I tell you, remind me to come up for a new name of those gizmos later."

"Noted."

"Thanks. Now, as for what I did, it all ties back to my description of how the world seems to adhere to natural laws. In fact, the world seems to have multiple 'layers', so to speak. The surface one is what we see and interact with on a daily basis and which follows the laws of physics, and then there is the second stratum underneath it that is for the operation of anything supernatural. Spells, enchantments, transformations and such are all embedded into this stratum, and when they are invoked, they get superimposed upon the first layer, and thus they manifest in the 'real world'."

"So instead of modifying the morpher directly, you modified the substrate that housed the information of what the enchantment was supposed to do."

"Bingo!" I confirmed with a big nod. I knew she would get it right away. This is why smart people are awesome.

"So it's a loophole."

"Kind of," I told her a little less enthusiastically before adding, "There's also a third stratum I haven't mentioned yet. It seems to be under both the natural and the supernatural layer. To come up with an analogy…"

"Please don't."

"Too late, already came up with one," I responded in the company of a smirk and explained, "It's like a firmware, and the world is like an operating system sitting on top of that."

"So what are we? Programs?"

"Idunno, I didn't think so far," I admitted, a teensy bit embarrassed.

"Figures," Judy mumbled under her breath before exhaling sharply and telling me, "Putting your analogies aside, do you think you could get a better understanding of the world by exploiting your newly discovered ability?"

"Certainly. I think I only scratched the surface of the system that runs this place."

"Then we need to experiment," Judy stated with the gravitas of an especially venerable patriarch making a declaration, like 'You shall not mix wool and linen in your clothes!'. The kind of declaration that is so authoritative it gets into important books and people follow them even though they were silly, just because they were said by a very authoritative guy. Of course it wasn't a perfect parallel, because what she said actually made sense.

"Agreed," I, well, agreed with my sageliest of sagely nods. "To do that, we first have to establish a supply of magical doodads and whatchamacallits to experiment on."

"You sound like you already have a source in mind."

"Two, actually," I responded with a modest smile. "The obvious one is the magical workshop under the school. They should have a lot of fun toys to play with, but getting them could pose a bit of a problem."

"Unless you can convince Amelia to smuggle some artifacts for you, I doubt they would be willing to hand their things over to you."

"I wouldn't bet on the odds of convincing her, but it's an option," I told her noncommittally before I outlined my second proposal. "I also had the idea of asking my alleged father-in-law if their dragon hoard might have a few trinkets I could borrow from them."

"Borrow it as you did to my catchphrase?"

"It wasn't your catchphrase, and please don't needlessly derail the conversation." My dear assistant clicked her tongue in displeasure, but I ignored her with the firmness of a mountain made of frozen Jell-O. Speaking of which, I was getting a little peckish. I wondered what we would be having for dinner, but I quickly shook away my salivating guesses, and instead I told Judy, "Do you think asking the irritating butler if I could play around in his study would be a bad idea?"

"Yes," she answered immediately.

"I thought so too. I'll do it anyway."

"Then why did you ask for my opinion?" Judy asked back with the tiniest of irritated frowns forming on her brows.

"Force of habit," I answered with my fourth iteration of the 'roguish smile' I may or may not have practiced in advance. It didn't seem to have too much of an effect, so I figured it was time to go back to the drawing board. Or rather, the mirror. Where I may or may not practice facial expressions when I get bored during the long nights. Please don't judge.

"Have you thought about the Hub?"

Judy's abrupt question threw me on a loop of a moment, as I had no idea about how it related to my smile, but then I managed to collect myself and requested her to clarify herself.

"Could you run that by me again?"

"What I was trying to say," she began with a frustrated huff, "is that if you want to have ensorcelled objects to study, you could use your black market connections to purchase some."

"Wait a minute... I have black market connections?"

"You do. Not as Leonard S. Dunning, but as Admin of the celestial hub." My dear assistant stopped talking for a moment and then in a deviously innocent voice she asked, "By the way, does the 'S' stand for 'scatterbrained'?"

"No..."

My answer was actually closer to a groan of exasperation than the actual word, but let's not split hairs about it. Judy certainly didn't do so, as she continued the conversation as if her jab against my very collected and thoughtful personage was just a figment of my overactive imagination.

"I believe there are no less than three black market vendors on the forums. You should ask them if they have anything you could use, or failing that, you could ask the regulars if they have any spare tools or leads on unguarded artifacts you could borrow."

"It's worth a shot," I agreed a little half-heartedly while simultaneously ignoring the air quotes she was making when she said the last word. "There are still some other minor hypotheses I have regarding the strata and my interactions with them, but let's save the in-depth discussion until I have some empirical evidence to back them up."

"If you say so," Judy responded with some degree of disinterest, but then she sidled closer to me and linked her arm with mine using practiced motions before asking, "Can I stay over tomorrow?"

The question came out of the blue, but after some consideration, I nodded in the affirmative.

"Sure. If I can get my hands on some magical thingamabobs, we might as well do some tests."

"I was thinking about something else," she stated with upturned eyes.

"Can I ask for some clarification? I can interpret your statement in a lot of different ways…"

My dearest assistant rolled her eyes as she tightened her grip on me and she responded by asking, "What are you going to do with Eleanor today?"

I wondered if that was a trick question, but she looked straightforward enough, so after some consideration, I honestly told her, "Well, I guess we are going to have dinner, and then we are going to cuddle? I might have a separate discussion with Abram and the frustrating butler, but aside from that, I don't have any big plans."

"I plan to do the same," Judy told me quite categorically. "Not the discussion parts, but the first half." I might have looked a little puzzled by her words, for she soon elaborated by telling me, "We have been going out for more than a week, but we have barely acted like a couple. I don't like it."

"Soooo… in short, you want to just sit back, watch a movie, and chill while we cuddle?"

"Something along those lines."

"I can do that," I told her in conjunction with the fifth iteration of my roguish smile. "Any requests on the movie front?"

"Anything goes, so long as it's not a sappy romantic comedy."

"Roger."

With that decided, we walked in silence for about ten seconds before Judy uttered, "You're going to get the sappiest romantic comedy on the planet just to mess with me, won't you?"

"I cannot confirm or deny such accusations, please direct your questions to my attorney."

"Just you wait, Chief," my usually deadpan girlfriend pouted in a rare, clear display of emotion. "Do it, and I swear I'll start to hate you."

"Yes, sure, if you say so…" I muttered under my breath, and I couldn't help but let out a soft chuckle as we continued on.

It should be a little tricky to squeeze an evening of chilling out into my timetable, but then again, I was the one who declared that I would utilize my sleepless nights to have the time to cater to two girlfriends' worth of needs. I just had to put the determination into practice now! Oh, the crosses I had to bear!