The Thursday lesson after surviving the trial of the river became almost mundane, involving working on their corona sense by wearing blindfolds and hardening the outer surface of their skin to prevent a pin from piercing it. After being given a parting charge by Marius, Jimmy and Spencer vanished immediately. Before Mike could follow to resume his confrontation, Srinivas put a hand on his arm.

"What's up, Srinivas?"

"Work go well today?"

"Had to skip lunch. Otherwise things were peachy."

"Good to hear. Listen, your lesson tomorrow will be very hard. You must be careful not to screw it up."

Marius laughed. "Are you trying to give your friend the answer key?"

"Test is about self control. Not great thing for you, Ski. You work hard with no problem, but controlling impulses is not area you excel."

Before Mike could ask any follow up questions, Marius patted Srinivas on the back. "That's enough for now. Advance knowledge won't help and talking about this will only distract him. Mike, mind if I ride home with you? Tomorrow's lesson will be at your place, so I need to know where you live."

Which resulted in Mike sitting in the back seat as Varanelli drove him and Marius back to the apartment. Marius regaled them with a story of discovering a Brazilian steakhouse and being unable to comprehend the vast amounts of meat available for him to consume. "You have to understand, even on the Angelship people don't eat meat. You get four ounces of fish every other day. Mealworms and crickets are roasted for a crunchy, high protein snack food, but animal flesh is generally not consumed. On a satellite ship, like I was stationed on, you don't get fish in its raw form. It's mashed into paste to make soup stock. So as the servers walked around with portion after portion of meat, I realized that the intention of my fellow diners was to in fact eat a meal almost entirely composed of animal products. I ate steak back on the home world, but the voyage recalibrated my expectations a bit. I wound up eating mostly rice and beans at the restaurant."

"I hope you don't expect me to go be a space vegetarian," Mike said.

"At the moment, Mike, I don't have expectations of you."

Varanelli glanced over at her passenger. "Do you have any expectations of me?"

"Safely conveying me to your residence."

"Come on," Varanelli said, "aren't you immortal?"

"Far from immortal. I'm hard to kill. I have some ideas on how to minimize the aging process. But I won't live forever. Most likely I will be killed by one of my former colleagues. If I last out their tenancy of this solar system, then I imagine the Chekowan will take me down eventually. If I dodge all of those bullets, my body will eventually break down and betray me. To your point, an automotive collision doesn't represent mortal danger to me. It would be inconvenient to a man trying to avoid detection, however. So put your pretty blue eyes back on the road."

Her answering smile caused Mike to roll his eyes. A rapid rebound hookup might skip over the fifty million step process of grieving a relationship that Varanelli followed, but that didn't mean he wanted to watch the opening moves of their seduction game. If Marius turned out to be an ass later on, Varanelli would have to handle it on her own. He didn't like the thought of rough-housing with his instructor one bit.

After they parked and Marius identified which door was theirs, Varanelli offered to buy him a vegetarian meal and a drink down at the corner bar. Perusing what he recalled of the menu, Mike could only assume she meant to order a hummus platter and fried tofu 'wings' from the appetizer list. He waved them off as he went inside to practice with his talents.

In the morning, he woke to a pounding on the door and the voice of Marius. "Wake with the sun, Mike."

Mike scrubbed sleepers out of his eyes as he opened the door of his bedroom. "You're wearing the same clothes as yesterday," he said.

The grin from Marius stretched his face tight. "I am."

"Don't expect a fist bump or anything."

"Do you want breakfast? I'm buying."

Mike shrugged. "Sure. I'd fist bump for a breakfast sandwich."

"No fist required. Just get dressed and we'll start the day."

In five minutes, Mike stood before Marius once more. "Let's go, boss."

They went to the nearest gas station, where Mike grabbed a powdered donut, orange juice, an energy drink, and a ham and egg sandwich. When he joined Marius in line, he saw the other man had selected two bananas and a plain bagel.

The disgust he saw from Marius as they studied one another's choices matched his own. "At least you didn't get a beer,"

Marius said.

"Whatever."

"Have you been drinking?"

"Not since you dumped my beer in front of the conservatory."

"And what of your finances? Are they still stressing you?"

Mike shrugged. "The IRS makes sure I'm always stressed about money."

"I'm not familiar with the IRS."

"Tax people."

"You owe on your taxes?"

"Long story. I don't like telling it."

As they left the cashier to sit down, Marius eyed him. "I would like to hear this story."

"Is that an order?"

"A request."

"Whatever, you already think I'm an idiot." Mike squeezed his eyes shut. "Since my wife died in the line of duty, the insurance paid out a serious sum. I didn't want blood money. So I wrote a big check to my in-laws since she was their kid. Then tax time comes around and I learn that the person who gives a monetary gift has to pay the taxes on it. And my bank account is sitting at approximately zero dollars. The IRS guys don't have a sense of humor, but they're not terrible. They set me up on a payment plan instead of sending me to jail. Only problem is the money goes straight to the government before it ever hits my bank account. So I work my ass off and barely get paid for it. I can barely make rent with what I take home. Then I get hungry and blow my budget at lunch. Srinivas is no help whatsoever in that regard."

Marius smiled. "If it makes you feel better, that is less stupid than I thought it would be."

"And you said you didn't have expectations of me."

"That was dishonest of me. I expect you to do great things or fail out spectacularly. You dive into my trials as if you don't know fear but then you raise red flags all over the place." Marius tapped his lower lip a moment. "Let's get started with today's lesson. If you manage not to screw it up, I have a plan to motivate you."

They walked back to the apartment, where Marius took charge by directing Mike to sit on the couch and pulling up a chair from the kitchen. He extended his pointer finger to poke Mike in the forehead, delivering a miniscule charge. The precursor came to life in Mike for ten seconds before puttering out. Marius poked his head again to deliver another tiny charge.

"Hey, boss, could you tell me what the plan is for this special one-on-one training session?"

"I could." Poke. Power. Gone.

"So . . . why are you giving me baby charges?"

"To hack the attunement process." Poke.

"Do you have to prod my forehead like that?"

Smile. Poke. "No, I just figured I ought to make the process more fun for me."

"Should I be using the precursor up like I am?"

"Yes, just keep doing what feels most natural."

Mike put his open palm over his forehead to intercept the next poke. "How is this helping me attune?"

"Attunement is a complex thing. Exposure familiarizes you with the three precursors, but the final step of attunement involves the mind reaching out to an external source. You can't do that with a charge in you. What we are doing here is taking you to the edge again and again by letting these charges exhaust themselves, then preventing the final step before you can attune." Poke. "Attuning happens effortlessly. The problem is that the human mind fixates on the first solution it finds. That is why Greg Smith can only use animas now. He couldn't unsee the suboptimal solution, so he is permanently limited."

Poke. "What I'm doing here is giving you your best chance to attune properly. Success correlates with a number of traits. Openness to new experiences. Intellectual curiosity. Integrative complexity."

"I'm not familiar with that last one."

"Just think of it as the ability to hold multiple perspectives on an issue in your mind at the same time." Poke. "I'm not sure how you rate on any of those factors, but you aren't controlled by fear, which is promising."

As the latest charge dissipated, Mike's eyes went wide. Even as the precursor vanished, he felt an echo of gravitas.

Marius seized his hand and dumped a larger charge into him. "This is your greatest trial yet, Mike. You need to unsee a solution. What was it?"

"Gravitas."

"Try to focus on another precursor this time."

As the charge drained away, Mike felt gravitas drawing near. With an effort he didn't know possible, Mike turned his mind towards nous instead. Neither of the precursors grew closer to him, held at bay by his willful change in perspective. "This is hard, Marius."

The massive charge he received next felt odd inside him for a moment, as if the animas component didn't want to enter him. The resistance passed and he wiped sweat from his forehead.

Marius nodded his head. "This exercise is hard in an odd way. We'll take a break for an hour so your mind can reset."

He slumped back on the couch and closed his eyes to let the headache subside. They sat in silence until Marius began the process again. It took only ten pokes this time before Mike almost accidentally attuned to gravitas again. A large charge prevented that. Again they went through the process and again he had to fight off gravitas. The next time it was animas that came to him, racing towards him as if eager before Marius reset his mind.

"It's a good sign you have had experiences with all three of them," Marius said.

Mike gasped for air as he slouched with elbows on knees. "I don't know if I can keep doing this. It's like trying to bench press a car."

"Believe it or not, it's better to do long, exhausting sessions like this. The erosion of mental defenses improves the odds."

The cycle of miniature charges resumed. Mike felt the various precursors in random order, the only consistency being that his brain seemed to like gravitas more than the other two.

As their session drew to a close, Marius filled Mike with a large charge. "As you passed the latest trial, I have a proposition for you." Marius withdrew a wad of cash from his pocket and counted out a sum that he held out. "A thousand dollars to help with your money problems."

Mike accepted the notes. "You're just giving me money?"

"I'm paying you to do a job."

"What job?"

"Not drink. I give you a thousand dollars and you stay sober for a month. Not even a sip. Can you handle that?"

Mike pocketed the money. "Sure thing, boss. Easiest money I ever made."

"Good. Because I will beat you senseless if you don't uphold our deal." Marius flashed his smile. "Why motivate with the carrot or the stick when you can do both? See you at class tonight."