"Alright, so," I began, buttoning my shirt the next morning. "I think that, overall, developing a fundamental understanding of how the physics of superpowers works in this universe, especially regarding what powers Viltrumite abilities, is gonna be the most important thing to do."

"Yeah?" Karasuba said, quirking an eyebrow.

"And between the Warehouse and the Pax Jumperia pocket-verse, I have, like. Seventy three years or so to work on it, if I wanna get it done before bedtime." It was, for reference, six in the morning, and I typically turned in at ten, on days when I bothered sleeping at all.

"Do you think that'll be enough time?"

"Honestly, no idea. I don't have an intuition for how long this sort of thing should take. What I can intuit is that it'd be faster if I could get a blood sample from your new body, and make a bunch of clones to run tests on."

Karasuba grunted, pulling up her left stocking. "I'm not exactly thrilled about the idea of having a bunch of clones of me running around."

I inhaled sharply. "It's... a little late for that."

"What."

"See, Matsu-"

"That fucking pervert," Karasuba hissed.

"It's not what you're thinking," I said. "Matsu wanted to oversee the recovery and restoration of the Sekirei, and as part of that, she used the Warehouse, with its time dilation factor, to host a bunch of experiments involving cloned Sekirei- I'd just become a geneticist, and we had the complete genome of every Sekirei who'd arrived on your ship, so... yeah. I think there were something like a hundred different direct genetic clones of you that got made, and..." I shrugged helplessly.

"...Have you met any of them?" Karasuba asked, quietly.

"A few of them, in passing, but I wasn't really that involved in the experiments," I said. "Also, I should clarify: these 'experiments' were mostly, like... observational. 'What does the life cycle of a Sekirei look like, over the course of eighty years? How do they socialize with each other when it's basically just other Sekirei hanging around?' Stuff like that. And also, at some point, they were integrated into the broader Warehouse population."

"Okay," Karasuba said, nodding. "That's..."

"However, just because I haven't interacted much with your clones doesn't mean I haven't interacted much with any of the Sekirei," I continued. "About halfway through the Sekirei Jump, I went on a vacation to the new Sekirei Homeworld, and, uh. Well, I proved to my own satisfaction that I am, in fact, quite charismatic."

Karasuba closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply.

"Well, this answers the question of how polyamorous I am," Karasuba said, standing up. "I don't need to tell you to never do that again, do I?"

"You do not," I said.

"You're not hiding some harem of cloned Sekirei from me?" Karasuba asked. "With clones of Kazehana and Musubi, or clones with both of their DNA combined in the hopes of making even fatter tits?"

"Funnily enough, I did once meet the daughter of a Musubi and Kazehana clone, and she had normal-sized boobs by human standards, which of course were absolutely tiny by Sekirei standards. But also, no, you're the only Sekirei I currently have winged. We're psychically bonded; you'd know if there were others."

Karasuba closed her eyes, furrowing her brow as she explored the full extent of our psychic li- hey, what're you doing with that memory of my first girlfriend?

"...Huh," Karasuba said. "Those arguments would've gone a lot different if you'd become Jewish beforehand."

"Can we go back to the original subject at hand?" I asked. "Y'know, the one where I do research and find a way to beat the Viltrumites?"

"Right, the reason cloning came up in the first place," Karasuba said, nodding. "That's... hrm. You have a sort of psychic hive-mind thing going on with your own clones, right?"

"Kind of," I said. "It's Fiat-backed, not just an ability I developed with Force powers. I genuinely have no idea if something like it could be developed with Force powers. Maybe? Force powers do have a pretty firm foundation in psychic stuff like clairvoyance, telepathy, and other stuff like that, so... Theoretically possible? But also, it might be prohibitively difficult to achieve, so... It might be better to instead just promise you that the clones I make are gonna be brain-dead and not actually people."

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Works for me."

----------------------------------------

"Well, shit, that's not gonna work," I muttered, hands on my hips.

"What's wrong?" Karasuba asked, coming in for a landing.

"These test results are pretty clear about Viltrumite powers being in the brain in a pretty significant way," I said. "Brain-dead clones aren't going to accomplish a goddamn thing."

"Hrm," Karasuba muttered. "...So, either you run all your tests on me, relying on the fact that I can't actually die, or... you don't run all of your tests. Or, I start trying to develop that hive-mind Force power."

"Regarding that," Clover began, drawing my attention. "There's been a development you might find useful for Force-controlled drone bodies."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Ordinarily, Force Sensitivity only occurs in biotic substrates," Clover said. "However, kyber crystals are a well-known exception to this, managing to attain a measure of Force Sensitivity in an abiotic substrate. Given that we know how to synthesize kyber crystal, it is a simple matter of lithography to create a kyber crystal that is, essentially, a Force Sensitive computer chip."

"Replacing a clone's brain with that would still be a problem," Karasuba pointed out. "Since the brain is pretty vital, and all."

"That isn't what I'm proposing we use the chips for," Clover said. "Rather, by attuning yourself to a sufficiently large amount of Force Sensitive processing power, you can expand your raw neurological horsepower to the point of being able to synchronize with and directly control the drone bodies, which can then retain an at least semi-functional brain."

"...Maybe," Karasuba said, furrowing her brow as she considered it.

"It sounds plausible to me," I said with a shrug. "It... may not be quite so elegant and clean as my Fiat-backed Perk ability, but, well, it was never going to be. So, Clover... please send me as much scholarship on the matter as you can, and I'll see what a few of my threads can do."

"It's already done," Clover said.

"Excellent work."

----------------------------------------

"Fuck!" I yelled.

"Did you just figure out something that makes you feel like an idiot?" Karasuba asked, wearing a crown made entirely of circuit-board-green crystal.

"Most superpowers in this world work on having more than three spatial dimensions," I said. "The thing with Viltrumite powers that looks so weird in body scans is because what I'm seeing is a three-dimensional slice of a larger four-dimensional thing."

"Uhuh," Karasuba said, nodding and prompting me to go on.

"So you, Karasuba, my beautiful wife, your body is just a simple three-dimensional slice of a four-dimensional biological machine that generates your powers," I continued. "Now that I've got four-dimensional scanners, I can actually see and examine the whole thing."

"And what makes you think it's only four-dimensional, and not five-dimensional?"

"Because when I look at the 4D scans, I can tell what's going on," I said. "I mean, I've got a few threads working on scanners for more spatial dimensions, but I'm pretty confident that it's just four dimensions for Viltrumites. I can pinpoint the weird biological version of a gravity drive that lets Viltrumites fly, and all the other mechanisms that cause all the other Viltrumite abilities. Fun fact, the Viltrumite mechanism that powers their naturally-enhanced healing and immune systems? Also has a genetic therapy mechanism that basically means half-Viltrumites will inevitably become full Viltrumites within the span of, like, twenty years. Weird as hell, but it does explain why a half-Viltrumite human can grow up to be just as strong, if not stronger, than a full-blooded Viltrumite. Also why a half-Viltrumite bug-alien was born looking like a purple, semi-chitinous bug and then grew up to look exactly like an ordinary human man with a mustache."

Karasuba grunted wordlessly.

"So... hrm." I tapped my chin, humming quietly. "Provided that I can start building stuff across the extra spatial dimensions- which has to be possible, otherwise new Viltrumites couldn't get their powers- I should be able to... improve on Viltrumite powers. Replace the inefficiencies of bio-CHON with the finely-tuned perfection of exotic materials. Whiiiiich... admittedly, will still take a while to develop and iterate on, but... fuck it, I got time."

"I suppose now's the wrong time for a distraction, then?" Karasuba asked, finally standing up from her seat on the couch.

"I've got a lot of time, so no, no such thing as the wrong time," I said, turning around in my chair. "...Oh, there's two of you."

"Very perceptive," the other Karasuba, who did not have a crown, said with a smirk. "I've been practicing controlling a second body at the same time as my first, and I've gotten pretty good at it."

"So," the first Karasuba said, still wearing her crystal crown. "Mind giving me a final exam in the three-body problem?"

"God, am I ever glad I met you," I whispered. "Whatever I did to deserve you, clearly I need to do it more often."

Further research and development could wait. I had all the time in the world, and I could certainly afford to spend some of it on a threesome with my wife and also my wife. Frankly, I'm just surprised it took this long for us to try that kind of thing; I've had clone bodies and multithreading ever since we got here.

"What you did was bring death to tyrants and justice to a galaxy," Karasuba said. "And if I get my way, you're definitely going to be doing more of that."

"Just, y'know," the other Karasuba added. "Not right now."

"We'll get to it when we get to it."