"... Alex!... Alex, listen damn it!" I got startled out of my deep trance by Galatea's scolding voice. I had even ignored her Avatar on the computer, too lost in my own mind. I blinked a few times, trying to make sense of the here and now after waking from my trance. My surroundings were brightly lit by the sun outside and a quick look on the display of my computer told me that I had spent the night and half the day in my trance.

No wonder both Galatea and my bladder were screaming at me. I tried to rise and my legs protested the sudden movement and I had to stretch them a little before they cooperated. After my trip to the bathroom, I needed breakfast. Suspecting that I was once more alone in the house, I picked up my phone so Galatea could talk with me as I was away from the computer. She was integrated into all my devices, allowing her to accompany me pretty much everywhere I went. I planned to get myself a smart-glass and greatly modify it to allow her to watch what I saw and maybe even talk to me via bone-conduction. Still, that was in the future, for now I had to use my phone to keep her with me.

During breakfast, I talked with Galatea about possible ways to get the parts and materials needed for my project. The simplest way would be to have them shipped somewhere and use a slightly shady courier to place them somewhere I could pick them up unseen. A basic dead-drop would work. It was amazing what one could find on the internet, as long as one was willing to search for it and, more importantly, pay good money for it.

In a city as large as New Brunsburg, there were always people looking for some easy money and the prevalence of superpowers made the old saying about an armed society being a polite society quite true. Few shady people were willing to risk pissing off someone who could throw them through a wall by double-crossing them.

As I walked back into my room, my thoughts went to casing. I already owned a 3D-printer, I bought it when I pretended to go through an artsy-craftsy phase about a year back. I used it to create a few plastic works of “art”, with a very loose definition of art, showing them to my father while pretending to be proud of them. He never asked about the printer after he saw the abominations I had created, probably fearing that I would get into it and become an embarrassment. Being an artist would be fine, being a failed artist? Not so much.

With the 3D-printer, I could create the necessary casing, so all I needed were electronics and shielding. The shielding was the bigger problem, the best material would be lead which was heavy and not easy to work with. I tried to find solutions for the problem but kept running into walls. In the end, Galatea came up with a solution. I had focused on material shielding, something that would work by simple virtue of the material and it's thickness. Galatea had a different, riskier idea. She had a model predicting that a thin sheet out of a specific alloy would work, if it was supported with a projected energetic field. It would be stronger shielding if it worked, but only as long as I had power. Without power, the sheet would provide little to no shielding. Part of me recoiled at the thought but in the end, I was planning to create and run an experimental fusion generator. If risk-avoidance was my plan, I was doing it wrong.

Together, Galatea and I planned an elaborate shell game with packets, post-boxes and couriers, sending a packet to a prepaid box, having it picked up there and sent on, switching couriers, boxes and drop-offs. Somewhere within the shell-game, I would make my way to one of the drops and play courier but not dropping the original off but taking it with me. Like that, I should be able to get my parts and materials without anyone the wiser. For small stuff like I needed now, it would work, for bigger stuff, I had to think of something.

Galatea had used the darknet vigorously during the last year, offering her hacking services to make some extra money and to built some contacts. Some of those contacts were now used to set up the planned shell-game and some were used to place discrete orders to go into shells. I had no idea if it was necessary but I went with a 'better safe than sorry' approach, knowing that I had only one shot at this. If my father got wind of any clandestine actions by me, I could kiss any freedom goodbye. To him, I was just a product to be sold for the maximum profit. Valued, certainly. Protected, undeniably. But a product had no voice to speak it's wishes, no choice of it's new owner. No, I would have to be as sneaky as possible until I had a power-base established that I could use to hide myself from my father.

Looking at the delivery times and various drop-times, I figured it would take me roughly two months to get all the stuff to me. I needed to make sure I had the necessary fuel to run my experiment so I needed deuterium and the only available source was using heavy water as a base. Building a vacuum distillation-unit was easily possible, I even had most of the parts and those I did not have, I could harvest from normal household-goods. I just had to break the vacuum and possibly a hairdryer or two. Then I'd have to run the bathtub a few times and distill the heavy water out. Storing it was easy, simple bottles would do, the stuff was stable and hard to tell apart from normal water. If I took one bath a day, I might be able to collect a small bottle of heavy water in the two months to get my stuff. At least I would be very, very clean.

As it was a simple, proven technology, I asked Galatea to create plans for a vacuum-distillation-unit, focusing on available materials and portability as it's main criteria. Then the all-nighter caught up to me and I just wanted to take a nap. Spending time in a trance was incredibly exhausting.

The moment my head hit my pillow, I was out and found myself in one of my recurring nightmares. I was entering the school-building and around me, I saw looks of scorn, some mixed with pity but mostly scorn and dislike. Closer to the lockers, I saw Clark with another of his cheerleader-toys, once more breaking school-policy by sloppily making out. A mocking voice within me compared them to two seals, fighting over a grape and wanted to joke that kissing simply created a tube with assholes on both ends but even in the dream-world I was unable to speak my mind. All of a sudden, the image changed, I was no longer in the school-hallways, I was now in the principal's office and he, too, was scowling at me.

“Alexandria King, you are hereby expelled from the New Brunsburg Guild Academy and are forever banned from the Guild. Have a good day.” he barked at me. I felt my plans crumble as dream-me slowly moved out of the office and through the corridors. Around me, people stood, laughing, jeering at me and my failure. Up front and center was Clark, bemoaning the fact that he would be settled with such a failure and disgrace. Slowly, the corridor's changed and my father stood in front of me, berating me and blaming me for my mother's disappearance.

With a start, I woke back up.

“Alex, are you all right?” Galatea asked me, concern in her voice. I wondered why she was so much more human than a lot of humans I knew. Once more, I had to remind myself that she had her name for a reason, as a constant reminder for me.

“Yes, I'm alright. Thanks. It was just a nightmare, the one I get out kicked out of school and the guild. I hate that one so much. It reminds me how thin the ice below me truly is. I don't see another chance but the guild to gain my independence from father.” I complained to Galatea and my subconscious.

The Guild. A lot of my plans and hopes revolved around it. The official name was 'Powered Human Cooperation Guild' and it was an independent organization under the United Nations-Umbrella. Their declared goal was the preservation of the planet. Not so much in an environmental manner but more in a 'We don't let anyone blow the planet apart!' manner. They did a combination of educational work, thus sponsoring the best schools all over the planet, and active duty work. They counted both heroes and villains as members, the only condition one had to fulfill was power. As an organization, they were the most powerful I knew about, not even my father could do a thing if I managed to become a member. Sadly, my power was not made for personal power so I had to go the route I had planned. Establish a power-base and become a technological power. Hopefully, I would manage to draw the Guild's attention without running afoul the Hero's League, their national counterpart and, at least partially, my father's puppets. It was a long shot, but so was everything else that might get me my freedom.