"Father, something might be wrong with Markus."

"Oh, what did you notice?"

"He did cardio. I have never seen him do that before. Normally he is all about lifting. I asked if it was about last night. It seemed like it. He said that there was more to grappling than strength."

Father laughed louder than Sevs had ever heard from him before. "Grappling, huh? Seems he got gassed too easily."

Wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, Father continued. "I'm glad to hear he is doing cardio. His friends have always been concerned that he's gonna die from a heart attack at 40. Susan must be a good influence on him."

A couple things clicked for Sevs, and he had to turn his head, so Father wouldn't see his blush in the rearview mirror. How had he not seen that before? Sevs kicked himself mentally. Well, that could have gone a lot worse. There had been so many ways to put his foot in his mouth. He must have been lucky to miss all of them. Not only would that have been really awkward, but even a brilliant child has things they shouldn't know about yet.

Father was still chuckling to himself as they pulled in for dinner. After they finished eating, Sevs made his appeal for computer access. "Hey, so, there is a project I want to work on at home. Can I use the computer for a bit tonight and maybe tomorrow?"

Father didn't even hesitate. "Sure, as long as it is a reasonable time."

He looked at Sevs, "You know, if you wanted to just use it for entertainment, I don't mind. I think I can trust you not to get too sucked up in it. If it starts to be a problem, we can revisit. For now, I want to give you enough room to explore. I reserve the right to check your search history, though. Also, don't think you have learned enough from Markus that you can really hide your tracks from me just yet."

Sevs wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. So he just nodded and thanked Father. Seemed his project wouldn't be a secret, not that he needed to hide it from Father. He was actually going to explain it as part of his pitch, but he didn't need to.

When they got home, Sevs hopped on the computer. It took a couple minutes for the tools to download, but it didn't take him more than fifteen minutes to get set up. Following the tutorial on the webpage package he was using, he had a demo version with placeholder text up and running in just a few hours. Father had been watching the news but came to check on Sevs as he was wrapping up and looking over the site for anything obviously wrong. "Susan's gym? That's not a very creative name."

Sevs jumped as Father spoke right over his shoulder. "It's just a placeholder for now. I don't think the gym has a name yet."

"Oh!" Father took a second. "Wait, so this isn't her site? I thought you were just looking up hours or something. You made this?"

"Yeah? Some of the things I do with Markus are much harder."

"So this was the project you were talking about? and you are done already?"

"Yeah? Hasn't Markus told you what we do?"

"Yes, I guess it's just one thing to see for yourself. Also, doing a whole project is a lot more complicated than fixing a bug or two."

Sevs was satisfied. There was a reason that he had been able to do this a little bit faster than he probably should have been able to. It was the notification that he received earlier.

Congratulations! Through studying under a master of the skill you have learned Engineering. You have taken the first steps down the path of changing the world to fit your needs. Designing systems and structures will be slightly more efficient. Effect scales with level (Normal training restrictions suppressed)

A tier-one skill but still a pleasant surprise. This was actually one that Sevs had already had before. Though never with an intelligence modifier so low. Still, this was a good root skill. Most of the skills related to creation could be reached through the engineering path. Sevs had a theory; that it might passively boost all problem-solving skills, but he was never able to prove it.

"Markus has been a good teacher, it seems. I didn't know he had that kind of ability. Maybe I need to see if there are more useful things for him to do at work. Maybe get him involved in some training."

“Maybe, you know, he thought he might be getting promoted?”

“I can’t say anything, but I've got a good feeling about it.” Father winked. Sevs laughed, “Got it, my lips are sealed.”

***

The next morning passed uneventfully. During the typical weightlifting session, Markus took another 15 minutes on the treadmill. Like last time he gave Sevs a bit of work to do on the smaller muscles as he did his cardio. Markus told Sevs that even though it wasn’t as fun as lifting heavy weights, it would help him not get injured. “One thing I learned the hard way, where you hopefully won’t have to, is that muscles get stronger faster than tendons. It's best to slow down the strength gain after hitting a good baseline and work on stabilization movements regularly. If you do that. You aren't as likely to get hurt.”

Sevs nodded. “That makes sense.”

“And besides, your Father would hand me my butt if I got you hurt. Never knew he could fight or was that wily. Got to watch out for him now.”

“Is this like a 'my dad could beat up your dad' situation?”

“Hey, don’t get too cocky, kid. Once I have a little staying power he’s not going to stand a chance.”

“Ya know, Father has been hitting the treadmill himself.”

Markus grimaced. “Of course he has. You are going to be there tonight, right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Work that day was also typical. They finished leaving comments on the document that they were reviewing yesterday. They both had some thoughts occur to them since the last session. Unfortunately, the author had yet to respond to their original questions. In a rare turn of events, they were both ready for the end of work to come. As that meant they could go back to Susan’s gym. They might have had slightly different reasons for their excitement though.