“Systemmy, did I ever tell you that I love you?” I jokingly confessed my feelings.

Yep, I’ve assigned her a gender. One of the quirks of Russian language was the specific gendering of every noun. To a Russian speaker a door is immediately perceived as feminine [she], while a table is seen as masculine [he] and a wheel is an [it]. Grammatical gendering like that existed in a bunch of Indo-European languages, including French, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, German and many, if not all, Slavic languages.

“You’re making me a far smarter man than I’ve ever been!” I sprinkled further compliments at 'her'. "I don't know what I did to deserve such generosity!"

She didn’t respond, as per her usual. I was fine with this sort of relationship - I loved obedient computer algorithms. In fact, the dumber they were, the easier it was to find out what made them tick.

The improved, multi-level, fractal version of [Identify-Visualize-Magnify LV 28] was glorious. I learned to wield my spell like a microscope, focusing it inward on myself. As a virologist I knew what things looked like at a million-power magnification and this knowledge had allowed me to easily direct it deeper into myself.

I gave this improved spell a new name - [The Infoscope]. It was a reference to the work of Vladimir K. Zworykin, the Russian-American inventor of the iconoscope. Dr. Zworykin's iconoscope was an early electronic camera tube used to scan an image for the transmission of television. It had laid the foundation for the Electron microscope that used a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination.

My Infoscope was now nearly as complex as the ESEM Electron microscope. Esmy was one of my favorite tools in the Bioweapons laboratory. It was a depressing fact that Soviet microscopy science had unfortunately fallen far behind the west, so we had to order Esmy from East Berlin contacts in 1988. Thanks to her, I saw the alien beauty of viruses with my own eyes.

The most fascinating fact about Viruses was that many Soviet scientists did not consider them living things. Viruses are basically microscopic machines - complicated assemblies of molecules, proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and carbohydrates.

Viruses do not consume any form of nourishment or expel waste, they do not grow and they cannot reproduce independently. Max Delbrück, German–American biophysicist, described the basic "life cycle" of a virus in 1937: rather than "growing", a virus particle is assembled from its constituent pieces in one step.

When a virus encounters a living cell, it attaches to it and injects its own DNA or RNA. The cell copies the viral data which makes more of the virus. These reproduced viruses now break out of the host cell, often destroying it in the process and infecting nearby cells. Rinse and repeat, until there are no more cells to inject.

All of these steps are predefined by the nature of the molecules that comprise the virus. Viruses don’t choose, respond, employ, evade or exploit - they follow a very specific program akin to a computer command. For all of their danger, RNA viruses are completely at the mercy of their environment and anyone willing to modify them.

Likewise, the original [Identify] spell was made of mana currents moving in a very specific way and it was now completely at the mercy of my modifications. I had torn it apart bit by bit, building atop its base foundation, adding new things to it with every iteration until it satisfied my needs and became my Infoscope.

I metaphorically pierced my flesh with the Infoscope and dove into myself. I identified my skin cells, veins and organs. I mathematically and visually perceived rivers of blood cells rushing down my veins. I witnessed the furnace of life within myself as my cells divided and increased in number.

I traced the lines of my forming nervous system and identified my growing bones. I learned the Omnicode names for each of my developing organs.

452/450 Experience optimum reached!

Message flashed. I initiated the level up.

Name:

_______ Alana Skyisle

Age:

56 days [8 weeks]

Species & Subtype:

Female - human - foetus

Level:

3

Experience:

2/800

Health:

3/3

Stamina:

3/3

Mana:

3/3

Mana regen:

3 m/hr

Strength:

0

Agility:

0

Dexterity:

0

Vitality:

1

Charisma:

0

Magic:

1

Luck:

0

Intelligence:

15 [+89]

Wisdom:

0

Soul:

1

Skills:

[Transient Soul LV 3]

[Universal Comprehension LV 1]

[Infoscope LV 41]

[Modify LV 15]

Investiture points:

15

Beautiful progress. I was unconscious for 4 days. Vitality had gained a [1] even without having to spend my points on it. If I had to hazard a guess - my body was naturally growing on its own. No new skill space though, alas. Also, I am officially a foetus. I didn’t like the Latin word “foetus” for some reason. It sounded chonky and odd to a Russian speaker. Luckily, I didn't just think in Russian.

By the 90’s I had trained my brain to think in English as most of the incredibly important Computing and Virus Research papers were coming from America. In the 1980s Soviet science began to lag behind the west, stagnating and getting worse just like General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev’s senility. The other General Secretaries of USSR that followed Brezhnev weren’t any better, dying one by one. The impending total economic collapse that followed put the final nails in the coffin of Soviet advanced research.

I ceased my life's recollection and added 15 points to Intelligence, bringing the total to 30 [+89].

Back to the grind of the observation of self!

The more I identified, the deeper I could go and because my growing body was constantly growing new cells, the observation and identification of them all was providing me with plentiful experience.

I peered through the cellular membrane witnessing mitochondria and ribosomes. I examined each cell nucleus in great detail, noting the location of chromosomes. The average grown human body has approximately 724 trillion cells. As a foetus I still had a long way to go, but nevertheless I had more than enough cells to observe in their splendor of continuous growth and replication.

At the same time, I had learned the meaning of [Modify], twenty fractals deep. With that knowledge, Modify became a spell through which I could channel Mana.

There was a certain thing I wanted to modify - my gender. I wasn't going to be born a girl! There was a lot of work ahead of me and it was good practice to level up [Modify] too! Luckily, I spent plenty of time identifying cells within my tiny body - I already knew where everything was.

Throughout my life I had attempted various unorthodox solutions to solve problems. It's how I often arrived at answers, when many others had failed. I knew the Omnicode words for [chromosome] and [gender]. What if I combined Modify with them? What if I used the programming language of this universe to modify my gender? To write a spell that would modify my organic body at the very base level? If I could modify spells then why couldn't I modify my genetic structure?

What if I attempted something that no sane microbiologist would even consider?

When I was a teenager and the great war was coming to its inevitable end, I could walk to the V. I. Lenin State Library without the fear of being pulverized by a German bomb. There, beneath shining lanterns, sitting at a green desk, day by day, I studied the great accomplishments of Soviet engineers. Gargantuan hydroelectric dams that were being built across our super-nation, the Moscow Canal, Magnitogorsk, the Baltic White Sea Canal. Moscow itself was changing around me, buildings were being relocated, avenues were widened and the Seven Sisters skyscrapers were rising into the sky. I kept that feeling of being able to accomplish anything in my heart since those happy teenage days.

I boldly proceeded with my idea, modified [Modify] into [Modify-Chromosome] creating a highly specialized version of the spell that only targeted chromosomes. It was very tedious, time consuming work but I knew that it would help me level up and acquire more [Intelligence].

In humans, the presence of the Y chromosome is responsible for triggering male development; in the absence of the Y chromosome, the foetus will undergo female development. I identified the necessary chromosomes within my cells and started to modify them to include the Y chromosome. Once my foetus-self grew and the modified cells within me replicated, I would become more and more male.

I had no idea where the information for Y chromosomes was coming from, maybe Modify was creating it somehow... but hell it was working! I could see it with my Infoscope that it was working! I was gaining tons of experience for modifying each of my cells.

Magic was incredible! It allowed me to do the impossible, to bend the laws of the universe at will, to create things the access to which I didn't even have. Potentially limitless possibilities of the future were being unlocked to me.

Eventually I had gotten skilled enough to target entire groups of cells. The more things I modified, the better I became at it.

As I emerged from my work with Chromosome modification, I realized that my experience had grown quite a bit. Enough to level up!