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"Conceptualization." She swings the goggles by their strap. "The version for dummies is that everybody possesses, whether they know it or not, a kind of holistic idea of who they are as a person. The COS. It's manipulated by the mind but somehow stored and disseminated through the blood. This causes a hell of a lot of knock-on effects regarding interesting uses for blood, some of which I'm positive you've—"
Ellery burnt through a full creepy blood phase, yes. "Yeah."
"Yes. The only relevant one to me is the way <span class="mu-i">goo</span> reacts with blood, which is to say extremely strongly. I won't bore you about why, but it does."
"I hope that's strongly in a <span class="mu-i">good</span> way," you say. "Or I don't see what the perks are of—" You indicate yourself. "It beats a snake, sure, but that's a fucking low bar. I assume you had a nice regular body at some point. Why—?"
"It's my job?" She sounds confused. "I don't understand why I wouldn't, frankly. Once you get past the adjustment period, it's nothing but upgrades."
Are you in the adjustment period? You're way less freaked out by all of this than you're telling yourself you should be, but it's not because you've gotten <span class="mu-i">used</span> to being fucking blue— it just doesn't feel real. It's <span class="mu-i">not</span> real. The real you is conked out on some cot in real life, having some fucked-up dreams— special dreams, l-dreams, whazzat, lacy dreams, licit dreams. Whatever. Someone told you about them once, where you're asleep but sort of think you're awake, so in your head you're walking around and talking like normal, flying, fucking some dream stud, whatever. And that blew your little mind at the time, but right now you're glad you heard about it, so you sort of know what's going on now. So you're not fucking losing it. Which you would've, because you sure didn't understand whatever shit Charlotte spouted earlier.
Anyhow, you guess that makes you emotionally adjusted, but she probably meant physically adjusted. Which is kind of exciting, if there's badass goo stuff out there after all. You wonder if you can figure that out for yourself, if you just sat down and tried stuff out, or if you'd need to enlist Pat in it. Would she help? She seems eager to repair her little kidnapping oopsy-doopsy, but she might start suspecting you were just trying to beef up your skills pre-escape. Which you would be, to be fair. Still, she seems to be willing to trust—
Oh, shit, she's leaving. (Fuck. You really just blanked out there. Bad look.) "Wait!" you say. "Wait. Sorry. I just had— I had one more question. Why is there a <span class="mu-i">gift shop?</span> You said you don't get—"
"I let Lester Six pretend to manage it. He likes having the illusion of control." She tucks her hands behind her back. "You're welcome to browse, though. Anyhow— like I said, I'm retiring for the night, and I think it'd be best if you did too. So we don't have any incidents."
You think about earlier's outburst. "Sure thing."
(3/4)
