Dr. Richards looked even glummer at being found out. “Ah, the calibration of the instruments to do that is not complete,” he acknowledged somewhat lamely. “It... requires that we establish a contact point elsewhere to get a reference...”

“You know that Dr. Strange could supply multitudes of such points promptly, right?” I went on grimly.

When his face twisted, it could really twist. “It... had not occurred to me, no...”

I picked up the knife there as I arranged the vegetables very, very neatly. “Would you like me to set up a consultation before you accidentally open a portal to an anti-matter universe or something and destroy the planet?...

“Let me make a point here.” He watched the knife start to chew through the veggies like a buzzsaw. “Victor von Doom would not have made that mistake,” I watched his lips harden, “because Doom knows some magic.

“I am not saying that you should take up sorcery, Dr. Richards, but not knowing even the basics of what an entire body of knowledge, which has literally been built up for the last ten thousand years on Earth, is capable of is really shooting yourself in the intellectual foot, is it not?”

His shoulders slumped in defeat, and the blur of the knife chopping vegetables, on top of the acknowledgement of cosmic beings being here, only nailed the point home.

“That seems like a very wise thing to do, on further consideration,” he agreed slowly.

“Keep expanding in your wife’s direction more. I’ve seen you start to open up more, moving out of that narrow band of thinking and tendency to hyperfocus. Sue’s a genius in her own right, with much more social and emotional awareness than you. She wouldn’t have made such an error, either.

“I think moving yourself beyond an autistic mindset and making it just one component of your intellect is a good move, yes?”

He sighed again. “Should I be asking for a brain scan of you?” he half-laughed.

“I doubt this much voltage running through your skull would be good for you.” My fingers snapped with lightning arcs, and he had to agree.

“Is it the electricity giving you your intellect?” he wondered aloud. “Supercharging the mind...”

“You’re now into psionics, not brain chemistry and biophysics,” I pointed out. “Alchemy.”

His mouth twisted again. “So, you’ve thought about that?”

“Of course I have. All us Schmot idiots are the same. We think about everything, all the time. With all the voltage, I just think about things furiously.” The veggies were done, and I prepped the pans and seasonings as the noodles were ready for the water. “If my reaction time is any measure, about fifteen times faster than you do. You could probably decrease that if your brain cells were superconductive, but lacing some Lightning Gold into your brain to do that is a very tricky process if you’re not into alchemy, although you might have the physical control to try.” I lifted an eyebrow. “However, you don’t have the means to sustain enhanced energy demands to the brain, so you’d need to increase your bioelectrical output, and that becomes a rapidly spiraling demand curve.

“Your strength is being able to remold and enhance connectivity between all parts of your brain, allowing you to expand into new ways of thinking without losing your old ones. I’d top out what you are best at before trying to go my route, which would likely hyperfocus you along limited thought paths and stunt your future development.”

He nodded slowly. “Please set up that consultation, and I’ll pursue some side projects until I can talk with Dr. Strange.”

“I will. Oh, and you know those Psi-wards I put up around the building?”

“What about them?”

“There’s been three attempts to get through them since I arrived here with the Phoenix.”

He frowned. “By who?”

“Charles Xavier.”

“The geneticist? Sue confers with him frequently.” Sue's specialty was in biochemistry, biophysics, and related materials. She was actually just as talented as Reed, but didn’t have his ability to assimilate so much information as quickly and cross-reference it. She’d rapidly taken over the extra tutoring with Peter, although when things spilled into engineering and mechanical stuff, Reed always got called in to approve or improve their designs.

“He’s not a geneticist. He’s a mutant, probably the most powerful natural telepath on the planet. He doesn’t do original research; he compiles research from other geneticists, indexes it all, and further refines it... and in the meantime, telepathically sifts out their research on a broad array of subjects for himself, keeping himself informed of things that haven’t been made public to hint at and guide the course of X-gene study.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Reed’s eyes sharpened noticeably. “Stealing research?” he restated calmly. As a scientist, it was one of the great no-nos of the profession... and a hot activity all around the world with the super-science era here.

“He’s made himself a polymath by stealing the knowledge of others without their permission, yes. For a telepath, it’s a lot easier to learn how to be a mechanic directly from the memories of a few dozen mechanics than it is to go through normal channels... and he’s a monstrously gifted mutant telepath.”

“Do you think he-?” he asked narrowly.

“Yes.”

He frowned. “Your very direct encouragement to wear magnapsium was not from random psions attempting to plumb us, or because of the Puppet Master...”

“No.”

“Is he a threat?” Dr. Richards asked directly. A powerful telepath could be a horrifyingly dangerous enemy.

“He’s much like you, actually.” He blinked. “A very high-minded, moral person with tremendous ability who makes decisions around a very narrow paradigm without conferring with others, and so does immensely stupid things at times, because he knows best.”

His eye twitched as the oil in the pan started popping, and I started tossing things in. Back-handed compliments and call-outs, all in one.

“I see. He has the ability to learn at a phenomenal rate by tapping the time and energy of others, and is simply making use of it. As long as they don’t know, and he doesn’t try to blackmail them or something, his invasion of their privacy is simply inconsequential to his greater goal...”

“Bingo to the hyperanalytical super-genius who doesn’t have enough time in the day to learn everything he wants to.”

He gave me another wry smile. “And what is his greater goal?”

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His greatest goal is... to get people off the compiler thief sites and reading this on its home site!

If you're not reading this on Royal Road, you're helping pay a thief. Please read it in its original home, it's still free! You get the foreword and afterword, author comments, and comments from people with questions! I have not given permission for this story to be posted ANYWHERE ELSE.

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“He believes that mutants are the next generation of human evolution, and need to be protected and nurtured from those that would threaten them.”

His smile slipped again. “That... could be interpreted a great many ways...”

“He’s also a massively powerful untrained psion... or at least, the psionic disciplines he knows are limited. There are implications to that, which I’m not sure of, but which a more powerful psion could probably ascertain.”

“Such as?” Dr. Richards prompted me curiously.

“His influence on the akasha, specifically the Murican Akasha. He’s effectively a kinder, gentler mutant supremacist, who doesn’t know enough to regulate his effect on the collective unconscious. What exactly do you think would happen if you were a normal human and you knew a powerful mutant supremacist was around, subconsciously only?”

“Mmm.” He considered that carefully. “On an instinctive level, I’d consider them a threat, I believe.”

“And thus Murica has the highest-degree of anti-mutant bias in the world, barring those nations that simply enslave those mutants being born that they find.” I swirled the chopped chicken and beef over the gas stove smoothly. “It extends right up through many levels of society, including industry and the military, preying on the existing racism and fanned on by the magical elements of the hierarchy, including the werewolves, vampires, and spellcasters.”

“Wait, those rumors are real?” Dr. Richards asked, blinking in shock.

“You never went looking to confirm them, trusting in government denial despite them being known as matters of fact by the Tribes for most of a century now?!” was my reply.

“I... no, I did not. Merely dismissed them as biological weapons manufactured by mad scientists and the like, pandering to ancient superstitions...”

I laughed, not loud, but he could still hear the chuckle. “Dr. Richards, the world has a massive secret history you know absolutely nothing about, and which the federal government doesn’t want its people to know.

“You really need to start expanding your circle of trusted friends, and start looking at other sources of information. I know you’re proud to be born in the States and want to raise its status on the world stage, but patriotism can flourish even if you do know the truth, you know?”

He was quiet again as things sizzled and cooked, obviously disturbed by what I was telling him. I didn’t often stay for dinner, and rarely talked with him alone, dealing more with Susan or Johnny, the latter of whom was always finding a reason to hang around me, offering to take me riding, take me flying, and so on.

“Does General Rogers know?” he asked shortly.

“If I do, what do you think? Do you think I’m as well-informed as he is?”

“He... I cannot imagine the man would permit such a thing...”

“What makes you think he can stop it? He’s neither the President nor on the Joint Chiefs. His rank is almost an afterthought; it’s his identity as a Shielder and The Patriot which is important. He’s probably kept very, very out of the loop on those sections of the military, and without proof, he can’t stop them.

“If you carefully bring up the subject, I’d bet you a hundred grand he’s even taken personal action against them in the past, and the brass also ‘knows’ he did, but can’t do anything about it.”

He was frowning deeply. If such a basic, horrible thing was truth, how many other things declared by the Tribes were true?

How badly were the people of the States actually being lied to, and oblivious to those lies... or worse, didn’t care even if they were lies?

“There is a reason basic historical texts from the Tribes aren’t allowed into the States, isn’t there?” he asked softly.

“Governments around the rest of the world know, Doctor. To say they think of a lot of Staters as oblivious cows isn’t an exaggeration. There are more vampires and werewolves in the States than in the rest of the world combined.

“As a point of fact, I’m sure there are absolutely NONE in Russia, which might even be their homeland.

“Your government really wants to put down the Tribes and take their lands.”

I leaned up to the intercom, thumbed in All Rooms, and called in, “Chinese by Dyna on the table in five minutes!” while Dr. Richards sat there, deep in thought, and the alarm of someone with the initials PP landing on the side of the building sounded politely.