I help Leda through the setup of her new phone, trying to teach her the important technical parts while doing so. Since she can’t read there’s a lot of information she’s missing out on, but it seems she still tries to read her name as I write it down. I should start teaching her writing, at least her own name. And properly teach her the base-ten number system; until now I’ve just used roman numerals or even glyphs.

In fact, what I should do is to offload that work to other people. If I can have her go to a school, that’d be great. And a bit challenging. Rules like ‘no magic unless a teacher says it’s okay or if someone is in grave danger’ and ‘park the main form out of the way’ would be needed. Hm, for the latter a roof could do, I think.

Either way she now has a phone. I chose a somewhat cheap model in case she breaks it, and also because she won’t need fancy features. I tried to find something pretty sturdy, with good battery and decent storage. In the end it got two out of three, with storage space instead relying on a 4GB microSD card. I preloaded the card with some music, notably her favourites.

She might not know how to read, but modern phones have great icons, and I put widgets for battery level and the music player on the sole screen. Everything she needs in one place. Needless to say, she can’t do calls, but I bought a phone because nowadays finding a dedicated music player is not only hard, but not really worth it.

With gifts done it’s time for socialization… Or rather, we hang out often enough, and while Leda can be a chatterbox we don’t have anything new to talk about right now. The wyvern in the yard has attracted some attention, though, but no one dared to get close yet. The rain might’ve helped, but I think it’s starting to let up.

And of course it starts another heavy downpour just as I think that. In fact, it’s heavy enough to bother Leda. Well, enough for her to just use the air umbrella spell. “Leda, could you please not send the rain under the roof?”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Much better to think ahead and not have to apologize, of course.”

“Like you’re any better!” She says, pointing her tongue at me.

“Well I am! At least a little bit, ‘cus I’ve lived longer and had more mistakes to learn from.”

“That’s cheating!”

I shrug. “Benefits of being older. It’s not like there’s no benefits to being younger.”

“But enough of that. You made a mistake, you were called out, and -hopefully- you won’t do it again. If you stick your main body’s head under the roof, I can fit the custom earphones to you. In the meanwhile, why don’t you go talk to those kids over there?”

Leda is one mean, lean, friend-making machine. Well, she’s not really mean, and while he main body is pretty aerodynamic, I wouldn’t call it lean. She is very friendly and quick to make friends, or at least acquaintances. And that’s the important part.

I have finished fitting the custom earphones. Due the her ears being little more than (relatively) small openings, there’s nothing to hold them in place. Instead they’re held in place by a strap going around her entire head which makes her look somewhat… weird. I considered getting one of those tiny princess crowns to put on top, but decided against it. That would (probably) look funny, though.

During that that time not only did she get on good terms with the group of teens that was looking at us from a distance, but also to pull them over to the roofed area and her main body. After that it didn’t take long for a few others to come out to get a closer look at the ‘dragon’.

Happy as she is to talk, she ended up redirecting almost all questions that were asked to me. I mean, diplomatically speaking that’s probably better, but while they may technically be my neighbours, I don’t even recognize most of them, and only a few I have spoken with more than a passing word.

Oh well, aside from not being out in the woods, the reason why I wanted to celebrate here was to humanize her and show that’s she’s not some murder machine. I do want her to be able to come and go without another police call.

This much social interactivity is a bit more than I’d like, but while I’d like to leave, that’d be kinda rude. Also, I don’t think I should leave Leda unsupervised. It’s not that the nearby adults wouldn’t stop her from doing something clearly stupid or dangerous, but they might not realize something is stupid/dangerous. And I don’t think I should just ignore everyone like an asocial asshole either.

I get my perfect excuse when my phone rings, conjure an umbrella of sorts and walk into the gentle rain, erecting a sound barrier. It turns out to be a interested customer who is not sure what they want (or what I offer for that matter) and the conversation goes on for a while, before they decide to buy essentially the cheapest of all the things they showed interest in. Oh well, while decently known by now, I don’t really have a reputation yet.

I had planned to drop off Tåke by the Den, then play with Leda for a while, but by the look of things she’ll be distracted by her new ‘friends’ for a while. Being teenage boys, they are suitably impressed by her draconic… everything. Or…. something. Either way, she offhandedly agrees when I ask her if she’ll be fine alone for a while.

I don’t think she actually noticed what she answered, but it’s probably fine, so I go and drop off Tåke in the Den. She’s still having fun when I come back and I check up on her, so I head inside to prepare for the e-meeting with the space business tomorrow.

The video chat with the space business people (there has to be a better word for that) starts at the appointed time with rather quick introductions. As soon as that is done, a man, presumably the ‘leader’ of the opposing group, gets straight to the point.

“You wrote a bit in your email, but it’s not clear exactly what you want. So, why did you contact us?”

“The long version which includes my reasoning, or the short version?”

“Tell me what we need to know.”

“A mix, then. A good place to start then would be to further introduce myself, or specifically some of the magical powers I have. I am probably most known for my shapeshifting, but my second most used magic is [Force Magic]. It lets you apply forces between objects, following Newton’s laws of motion.

Now, one of my favorite uses for shapeshifting is flight. And I’ve experimented with seeing how high I can go - according to my phone’s GPS I’ve reached an altitude of almost ten kilometers several times. I’ve tried to go fast as well, of course, and I think I can reliably hit three hundred kilometers an hour.”

A take a moment to collect my thoughts, knowing that I have a tendency to speak too fast and run out of breath with these kinda things. “And then I asked ‘what if?’ What if I specifically make a form to travel higher and/or faster? What if I make a tool to give acceleration? I already have a prototype magic-powered thruster.

After thinking about those things for a while, I wondered just how far I could go, and considered just pushing as high as I could go. And then I thought about the dangers, which I know that I don’t fully understand. I’ve played Kerbal Space program of course, and my interest in science in general has taught me a lot, but if I really wanted to go all out I figured it would be wise to ask professionals. And here we are.”

The others look at the boss-man, who makes a subtle expression for a little, silent, while.

“I see. I assume you didn’t contact us for something you could find out with Google?”

I nod. “Correct. I contacted you, and other relevant businesses, because I want a cooperation. I want knowledge and expertise in space and space tech, in which I also include stuff like making equipment for space.

My goal, as it were, is to reach space on a sub-orbital trajectory, using as little equipment as necessary and magic. For you, this could be an opportunity for publicity -think of Baumgartner-, but I can also share my knowledge on magic and help develop magical tools and equipment. I assume that there are companies willing to sponsor such an endeavor, as well.”

“I see, you’ve clearly thought this through. I’ll say immediately that you’re not a great salesman. But maybe you don’t need to be. We would like to discuss your proposal internally. How about we contact you in two hours?”

Hmm, that should be fine. A bit annoying to wait, but I can work on the magic thruster in the meanwhile. That they’re taking so long presumably also means they want to seriously consider it. Well, I say ‘they’ but so far only boss-man has done the talking. Not that it matters to me.

“That should do fine. I might be away from the computer for a moment, but you have my phone number.”

As it turns out, not only did I have time to do what I planned to do, which was making the magical thruster mk2 (now more like a jet engine instead of just driving a propeller) but I went ahead and tested it, then recorded a demonstration, which I also had time to edit. It's still uploading as a hidden video, but it looks like it will finish in time for me to share it as a proof of concept.

But first: boring stuff™. They are interested, so we'll have to make an agreement and contract. Less boring is the part where I explain what I already know and some of the questions I have.

“So the most complicated part would be surviving the brief time I’ll be in space. I have a solution to the lack of air which works underwater, but haven't tested it in a vacuum. Then there's radiation, which I think I can avoid, but I'll need to test that method in vacuum. With the air trick of course And there’s heat control, which I can do with magic.

That's the surviving (and not getting space cancer, the worst ‘super’-power) part. There's also the challenge of getting there, which I'm looking into but will need help with. I have a video uploading with a proof of concept thruster-slash-engine thing. Finally there's the ‘get back down safely’ part, but I can probably handle that as long as I don’t burn up in reentry and slow down do a manageable five hundred kilometers an hour or so.

That's the parts I've thought of, and what I've thought about them.. There's probably some things I missed, whether for ignorance or because I simply didn't think of it. So yeah, I think I have a decent overview of the challenges involved, and of course all of those would need serious testing before risking my life. Oh, the video is done, let me send you the link.”

Apparently they think I’m understating the difficulty of the challenges, but when I detail my solutions, they have to admit that magic makes some parts a helluva lot easier. The biggest challenge will be keeping things small - a suborbital trajectory isn’t nearly as hard as, say, going to the moon. It’s more like the ‘Red Bull jump’. That’s not to say it’s easy, but hey. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Among other things we also talk about and set some milestone goals. The first is to formally measure various things like max altitude and speed. They also want to measure physiological data with a thin atmosphere, though this will be done safely down on ground in some lab.

As it turns out I have been doing far better in lower pressures than I should have with no protection, meaning I have accidentally found some way to counter low oxygen levels and possibly decompression sickness.

The next goal is to the stratosphere, an altitude of 20 km. At that point you will need not only an oxygen mask, but a pressure suit. Without magic, that is. Depending on the previous tests it might still hold true, but either way this is where the challenges start. The next goal is to reach the mesosphere at 51 km, which has the same challenges, just ramped up.

The final goal is to cross the Kármán line at 100 km, thus reaching ‘space’. Of course, it will just be a suborbital trajectory, so I won’t actually be ‘in orbit’ That requires moving sideways as fast as you fall towards the ground. Or, paraphrasing Douglas Adams, ‘falling towards the ground and missing’.

Well, it will take a while to get to that point. They make a temporary estimate/schedule in two phases. Phase one is doing basic testing, which should be done within two months, and phase two is to look into magical alternatives to technology and forming a plan on how to actually perform the stunt.

That gives us four months, but the estimate could be wildly off given that we don’t know that much about magic yet. It might make things easier, but it’s also pretty damn hard to test.