There was no indicated change room, and the Doctor was focused on the canister and the stack of papers she was setting down on the table.  Jamie changed where she stood, folding her clothes and setting them on the edge of the table.

“Sit.”

Alright, guess there’s more talking to be done.

Jamie sat in the chair.  Comfortable.

“Sample T-one-one-seven-seven, with the agreed upon addition of Sample C-zero-zero-seventy-two.  This is correct?”

Ooh, mixing things up? This could have some interesting results.

“Yes.  It’s what I paid for.”

“Read and sign here.  And there are stipulations on, let me see… pages twenty-six and twenty-nine that you need to sign as well.”

Paperwooork!

Jamie leaned forward and read through the contract.  It was every term they’d agreed upon, legalese and politely worded warnings about the hell Cauldron would try to bring down on her head if she broke the terms of the contract.

Hehe.

There were pages of receipts covering the financial transactions, and pages more of details about her own medical and psychological evaluations.

Basically the same kinds of things we saw back in Infestation.

There were two stipulations to agree to.  One for the three favors she’d agreed to perform.  Another on the psychological testing.

Seems alright so far.

She made her way to the room where she’d done her stress test.  Here, she’d run back and forth with steadily increasing speeds until she couldn’t run anymore.  She’d rested, then run again, then again, until she couldn’t even stand.

Sounds intense.

The Doctor was waiting for her.  A metal canister sat on a table, and there was a sturdily built, cushioned chair sitting close by.

And there it is.

Jamie’s very own power potion.

“You’re ready?” the Doctor asked.

Jamie nodded.

I assume they have a safe room specifically designed for the potion to be taken in. Newly obtained powers can be quite dangerous, after all. Just look at the Scrub incident.

“If you’ll change into this, we can preserve your clothes for the return trip home.”

Jamie took the offered clothing, a plain gray bodysuit that would cover everything from the neck down.

Good idea, especially given the chance of physical changes.

A word in blocky black letters on the front read ‘Jamie’ while one on the back read ‘Client’.

“Hi, my name is Jamie Client.”

The Doctor was not waiting for her, but she knew where she was going.  She strode down the empty, spotless hallways, past innumerable matching doors.  There were no windows in this place.  Nothing peeking into the outside.

So does she have her power yet? She’d have to for the thing I suggested in the last post to be, but there was a bit of a wait.

If she does have it, maybe she’s here to receive instructions on one of her favors?

But if not, I think we’re about to see her receive her product.

Still, she knew where she was.  She’d checked the GPS data on her necklace.  The Ivory Coast.  The west coast of Africa.  It was dangerous information to have.

Oh, huh. That would explain the Doctor’s dark skin and French accent.

If I tried to open one of those doors, would it be locked?  What would be inside?  Or would alarms go off, my chance here spoiled?

Maybe there’s nothing behind them, their presence being a test for customers as far as following the rules goes.

She’d been here twice since her first meeting.  Both times, she’d had her psychological testing.  She’d also had a full workup done.  The psychiatrist had been a young-looking white man, the doctor a heavyset Greek.

Sounds like it’s time, then.

Although I guess it might be time for the physical testing? Or is that what she means by workup?

They’d said little beyond what they needed to for the testing, and had volunteered nothing about Cauldron.

Aw.

Whatever these favors were, all she could do was hope she could do enough good to counterbalance any wrongs she’d have to commit.

I’m not sure post-Decision Taylor would see it this way.

“Alright,” Jamie said.  “Sounds like a deal.”

■

Congratulations, “Jamie”. You just made a deal with the… well, not devil. They’re more like the fey.

Jamie’s fourth visit to Cauldron was less out of her way than her first.

Ooh, skipping ahead quite a bit!

Maybe all we just saw was a while back and Jamie’s the reason Ramrod was in the Birdcage by the time of Interlude 10.5?

She entered the same way as before, but this time the hallway from Cauldron’s location was transplanted into the middle of her apartment.  She wasted no time in stepping through.

Hah! That’s quite a bit less out of the way, yes.

Jamie wondered momentarily how her own mental state would influence her powers.

The Doctor went on, “We have a package we call ‘Shaping’, and another we call ‘Morpheus’.  Both are intended to make the most of the two month waiting period and help a client reach an ideal mental and emotional state.

I would assume Morpheus involves sleep and dreams somehow.

It’s often purchased by our high-end customers, to refine the powers they want and help ensure there are no untoward effects. For a low-end customer such as yourself, I don’t know that it would suit your needs.  You would be buying a lower quality sample to pay for the package… perhaps if you were someone who wanted powers for recreational purposes.

Yeah, I’m not surprised the packages would be expensive in their own right.

If you wanted to help guarantee that you got the ability to fly, for example.”

Makes sense.

Jamie nodded.

“There’s the Nemesis program, but you already have an opponent in mind, and I expect you’re more interested in a fair fight than having an opponent you’re guaranteed to succeed against when it counts.”

Hmm. So does that mean Cauldron sets up an enemy for them, in order to make them look good?

Or, wait, given the context she’s bringing it up in… setting up an enemy to focus on so that the power latches on to that animosity and adjusts itself to be good against that enemy?

Jamie looked at the other lines on the graph, “And I’d be getting something like an ‘O’ of three and a ‘P’ of five.”

“Something in that neighborhood, yes.”

Sounds like a good balance.

“A power rating of five to Madcap’s seven,”  Jamie put her elbows on the edge of the desk and her head in her hands.

I think you could beat him with that. The choice of the power category itself seems more important, honestly.

“There’s a chance you could get lucky and achieve a power with a greater ‘P’ value than expected.”

Again, that misdirection.  Jamie shook her head.  “And a roughly equal chance that I could get unlucky, since it’s an average.”

Right, good catch.

“Admittedly true.”

“Is there anything else I could do?  A way to get better results?”

“We have options, but I don’t know that they apply to your case.  I mentioned the psychological testing earlier.  You should know that an individual’s personality, mental state and background do seem to have a great deal of effect on the resulting power. I would even say it’s one of the primary factors, outside of the sample itself.”

It’s probably the factor that tends to determine the specifics beyond what the reliability of the sample provides.

“I… I’m not fixated on anything particular, powerwise.  Flying would be cool, but I’ll take anything that works.”

The Doctor tapped a key, and the graph shifted so there were only three rows.  She’d removed the samples with higher uniqueness values.

Aw.

“Then the question is…” the Doctor said, “How much are you willing to gamble?  A hero can beat a superior foe with strategy, tactics and forethought, and I get the impression you’re focused enough to put your mind to the task.  Perhaps you’d want to emphasize reliability in a sample over the power it could offer you?”

That is more fitting for forethought since she could more reliably start planning before even getting the power.

“Can you zoom in?”

The Doctor did.

“So… how unreliable is a five, if we’re talking about ‘R’?”

“If you decided on a sample with an ‘R’ score of five, I would tell you I could make no promises.  There would be perhaps a three or four percent chance you would experience some unwanted physical changes.  Zero-point-five percent chance that you’d experience changes of a degree that you wouldn’t be able to go out in public without drawing notice, even with heavy clothing.

The sort of changes Newter and Gregor have to deal with.

You would, I’d venture, not be buying a particular power, but the broader category of that power.  To use our earlier example, you would not be buying acid spit, specifically, but an acid power.”

If it’s a 1-10 scale, this seems like an appropriate five.

“As you can see here, this graph shows the relationship between cost and the rising ‘P’, ‘O’ and ‘R’ values.”

It was a cube broken into a multitude of smaller cubes, with P as the X axis, O as the Y and R as the Z.  They ranged from white to sky blue to darker blue, purple, red, and finally crimson.  The key at the bottom of the graph suggested that anything beyond dark blue would cost several million dollars.

I guess you gotta settle for something in the lower reaches of each category. Or the very low reaches of two and the higher reaches of the third.

By the time it hit crimson, it was ranging into the hundreds of millions.

Damn, that’s a lot of money.

“This… is what you can afford.”  The Doctor hit a key and the graph was reduced to the white and light blue cubes.  “You could theoretically push into the seven range of ‘P’ values, to put yourself at this Madcap’s level in terms of raw power, but you would be forfeiting a great deal in the other two departments.  Your powers would be relatively simple, defaulting to the sort of abilities that countless other heroes already have… and with the low ‘R’ score, you would be risking getting something you do not want.

Honestly, high O seems more interesting. Maybe she’d get something really unusual to use cleverly against Madcap.

Physical changes, perhaps, or powers outside of the area you wanted.  Super strength when you desired telekinesis, for a crude example.”

I suppose those both fall under the theme of lifting things. Telekinesis is just remote super strength, and that’s when it’s strong.