I left Tanisha to her own devices, following Nisha’s advice to give her space to approach me on her own time. The few times, I saw her, I simply ignored her, not engaging her at all, and went on with my day. It made for fun living, so I spent most of my time in my workshop, getting the shop ready and designing the tools I needed to build the microbots I had designed.

The first step to get the shop ready was to check for cameras, going over every centimeter and making sure that there was no surveillance inside the shop. Up to that time, I had used normal looking tools and machines to hide what I was actually doing, but I was not quite sure that it would work if I started to build completely new machines and operated them.

Thus, making the shop secure was the first necessary step.

It was quite a surprise, that no matter how I searched, there was nothing that appeared to be surveillance equipment, no bugs, no cameras, nothing. I searched for emissions, even going so far to let a scanner run through the night, I checked every fixture, every vent, every nook and cranny, looking for possible surveillance equipment, using a fine toothed comb, better known as the magnifier I was using to see my microbots, and I got nothing. So, either the Guild had surveillance gear smaller than most microbes, or the room was clear.

The search took me days but while it was boring, it allowed me to think of ways to build and manipulate individual parts that were generally microscopic or smaller. The only way I could come up with, was to build the first in-situ, using computer controlled manipulator-arms and even radiation to nudge things, at the size I was planning, everything would result in changes to the parts I wanted to manipulate.

After checking the official rules for the workshop, I realised that only radiation that leaked outside the workshop using it was considered problematic, so I was in the clear as long as I made sure that nothing leaked out.

I had to construct a vacuum-chamber anyway, so making sure that it was radiation-proof against the types of radiation I was planning to use was comparatively simple. The vacuum-chamber was the second tool I had to build, the first was another bank of energy-crystals that allowed me to run the tools I wanted to use, in addition to the super-computer to control everything.

The finalized design I had was quite a bit larger than I wanted it, almost ten times the size of my planned five micron-diameter, but sadly, I doubted I could create a smaller size without the intermediate step or zero-gravity. Once I had built the larger microbots, the microbots could be controlled and use their fine manipulation and sensors to create the smaller microbots, which I planned to call nanites, even if they were not quite on a nano-scale but on a single-digit micro-scale. It was just mentally too tempting to call them that, after all nanites had been a staple in science fiction since long, long before I was born.

Of course, those often ended in grey goo devouring the world or something like that, but the nanites I was designing had a large flaw that would prevent them from running wild. Outside of a cone of carefully calibrated microwave-radiation, they would run out of energy within seconds. Hard to devour a planet, if you need to lug around a microwave and even an accidental electro magnetic pulse had good chances to fry them all.

Thursday night, when I got back to the room from my workshop around midnight, Tanisha had waited up on me, sitting on her bed, in her nightshirt. I kept ignoring her, as I had all week, but she wanted to talk.

“Diana, can we talk for a moment?” she asked, sounding rather timid, compared to normal.

I was just about to ask, if she would accuse me of molestation if we did, but managed to bite my tongue, almost hearing Nisha tell me to have an open mind and listen.

“What do you have on your mind?” I asked instead.

“I…” she started but paused for a second, “Thank you. Thank you for getting me, Friday night.”

I simply looked at her, waiting for her to continue when I realised that tears were gathering in her eyes.

“I…” a small sob escaped her, “I’m sorry for what I said Saturday morning.” she managed to get out, between more sobs and tears running down her face. She looked so morose, almost like a beaten dog, I could only feel pity for her.

“Is it ok, if I give you a hug?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle. The look on her face was just heartwrenching, so the moment she nodded, I gathered her into a hug, just holding her as she sobbed into me, clinging to me, like a drowning person to a liferaft. As she clung to me, I had flashbacks to a similar situation, a smaller body, clinging to me, sobbing into my shoulder.

After maybe ten or fifteen minutes, her sobbing subsided and she pulled back a little.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” she tried to play it off, apparently embarrassed by her own behaviour.

“I think you know very well what came over you, but that is fine, you do not need to explain yourself to me. I will listen, if you want, even promise to keep whatever you tell me in confidence, but you do not need to explain yourself.” I managed to push down the memories of Sophia and keep a steady voice.

She looked away, nodded once and I gave her space. Something seemed to have broken free inside her and needed to play itself out. I went to bed, wondering what the final result would be.

The next day started as any other, with a visit to the gym and classes. Part of me wanted to discuss Tanisha’s behaviour with either Nisha or Mina, as they both were much better when it came to interpersonal relationships but at the end of the day, I felt that I should keep the events private. I certainly would not want to have a midnight crying jag talked about.

Shortly after lunch, Galatea started to light my glasses up with short flashes of articles I needed to know about, various reports about the conclusion of the investigation into Skylar and to nobodies surprise, the investigation had concluded that he needed to be sacked. Who would take over for him was not said at this point, but I was quite certain that Battlemaster would move upward. If he did not, it would be to create a smokescreen, to make sure no public scrutiny was applied to him, with the previous reporting still in the public mind, but I doubted it. The public mind had not enough memory to remember reports that had been published weeks ago, unless someone worked to keep things in the public eye.

Just knowing that Skylar had been railroaded made me a little annoyed, wondering if I even wanted to gently take down the Greenes, mentally playing with the idea to simply built a couple of missiles, fit them with something that went boom on a large scale and solved the problem with a bang. It would not be too hard, if I was willing to cause some collateral damage, even downright easy if I upgraded from some collateral damage to a lot of collateral damage. But, just remembering how I had felt after the necessary shooting of the Powered at the training compound and I knew that missiles would not be the solution to that problem. I was just not made to be a mass-murderer.

Shaking the visions of missiles, raining from the sky, I focused on happier thoughts. Nothing, but my dislike to let the Greenes, especially Clark, win prevented me from simply going somewhere else. A simple command from Galatea would blow up the base I had in New Brunsburg, giving them a nice crater to remember me. The water-main that I had tapped would probably fill the crater quite fast, giving them Lake Metis. What better way to make a city remember you, than to change the geography.

Also, thanks to Galatea and her ability to play the markets, I had more than enough money, unless I wanted to buy myself some tropic island or something like that, so I could get some property in some country with either liberal laws or bribable officials and built myself a facility there. Some place in Africa or maybe Southern America, close to the good coffee-producing countries, that might work. Land was cheap there and as long as I had some sort of water-source, even ocean-water, I had unlimited energy and with that, clean water.

My happy daydreams of a private research-facility somewhere accompanied me through the day and after class, I changed my usual routine of going into my workshop and went back to the dorm, in case Tanisha wanted to talk.