Chapter 6

"Yes, you're right of course. I didn't factor you into my planning, which was clearly a mistake. What do you want to know?"

It's always better to apologize quickly and go on the offensive, put the onus on the other side. Certainly, they were looking off balance - did they really think I'd grovel and whine?

"What can you do?" Dad asked after enough seconds for me to do the work necessary to factor them into the master plan. I was, more and more, liking the way things were shaping up.

With a theatrical wave of my hand, which from overwatch looked more than a bit silly, I ported their suitcases to storage, and put away their contents in an orderly fashion. A breath thereafter I had trays with their favorite aperitifs floating by their sides.

"Teleportation," I moved us to the living room, "ESP, the farsight thing, and a bit of telekinesis. I'm also a high level gadgeteer, with some devisor to leaven the dough, and a high level mental exemplar. Not a supergenius per se, but I can comprehend and work at what looks like impossible speed. And I need your help."

Several sheaves of printouts manifested on the glass tabletop.

"As you might recall, my bank account has online trading permissions. I've had some modest success investing, and since I have powers, that's almost automatically illegal. Please go through the paperwork, it includes earning projections that, by my calculations, are 90% accurate, and plans for tax shelter corporations and blinds. If it works out, you can quit your jobs and go to work for my corporations, with a team you'll recruit doing most of the work under your supervision. I'd appreciate it if you could recruit mutants where possible. A PDP would be especially useful. You can semi-retire, raise Emily and the twins in comfort."

"Twins?" they interjected almost in unison, startling me.

"You didn't know? Ahem, Mom, you're definitely pregnant with twins, no complications I can see. At a guess, they're three weeks old. Did you take any antibiotics? They're known to interfere with some contraceptives. Girls, both of them."

It suddenly struck me that there was a real possibility of Emily manifesting, and these new siblings as well. After all, mutation is genetic trait.

My little revelation managed to trump everything mutant related, and even business related. Mom actually gave out a little shriek, and started calling all her friends, and dad talked about suing her doctor, not entirely humorously. Mom spent quite a while on the phone, while dad looked intently through the data and the presentation I'd prepared. If there was one good habit I'd acquired, it was proper documentation. Admittedly, with a perfect memory there wasn't much need for it, and none of the serious plans were written down, but for the gadgets I might consider marketing and at least the initial fund raising, I had everything prepared in soft copy. No one was taking me down on tax charges!

"The numbers here are unbelievable," dad stated after a brief review, "and I wouldn't believe it at all if it weren't for the periodic bank statements. It also means you're not telling us everything. Even a genius gadgeteer can't make this kind of money on speculation without building an AI or having some sort of technopath abilities. I've heard of mutants who can directly interface with computers. Or ... do you have some sort of precognition?"

"No, I don't. I do have a resource, but I'd rather not mention it. At this level, it's the sort of thing people will do a lot more than just kill for," I said flatly. The temptation to share was strong, but it was also stupid. It would make all of us bigger targets and could lead to nothing but heartache. A secret shared was a secret endangered, and it was best kept by one person who has protections from psychic intrusion ... which I was working on. The scanning stickers were almost complete, just some final work on the analysis devises needed, which I could only do myself, by (TK) hand. One reason I ever so much preferred gadgets, you didn't need to get your hands dirty.

With the stickers active, I'd be able to learn a lot about how other mutants did what they did. There were a surprising number of sites devoted to just who did what and how, and many others devoted to tracking supers of both sides. The.mut sites the forums referred to gave out even more information, and reading between the lines to see what was disinformation or psychological warfare wasn't that difficult. There were several dozen maybes and a great deal remained unknown, but in whole I was confident enough to have picked my targets. As purely passive, invisible receptors that burrowed beneath the skin, even I couldn't come up with a simple way to detect the data stickers. Of course, I had every intention of avoiding any magic users, including supers with magical talismans, or the big name scientists like Dr. Thunder or the Amazing Three. By now, I believed I could rely on my ability to recognize the presence of magic by sight, and I might also be able to recognize mutant powers by sight. Aura sight was a much underestimated ability with usefulness beyond the immediately visible. Turning an ambush, for example, was a life-saver all by itself. I'd gotten started on the military-related reading list, which in many cases was a surprisingly boring collection of adages and Confucian semi-wisdom-drivel, where it wasn't ridiculously obvious. Besides, I'd only use the stickers where there was no chance of detection.