"That's it?" whispered Mei-Ling sounding incredulous, "You gain this power... this freakin cool chance to photo-upload entire books into your mind, and all you can think of is testing out. That's the limit of your vision?"

"Not so loud..." hissed Sean, glancing around, "Announce it on the intercomm, why don't you... geez. I'd prefer to keep it a secret for a while, if you don't mind. Haven't even told my parents. Anyway, its not a photographic sight, like you think. More like pulling an all-nighter without the effort. Except for the naseau and exhaustion. What's wrong with my plan? "

They were between classes, walking quickly to get to their respective classrooms, and the corridor was mostly empty.

"Dude," Mei-Ling composed herself with an effort, gesturing like she often did when excited, "we need to try and max out your power. Don't you get what an incredible opportunity this is? People spend their whole lives learning more and more about less and less. Specialists... scientists, engineers, doctors, mathematicians. You know why? Human knowledge has grow too fast for any one person to grasp it all. And so we have these little sealed bubbles of expertise. It wasn't always like that. There was a time when a scholar could honestly claim to know something in every field. Cross-domain fertilization. And that was the greatest flowering of knowledge in human history..."

"...the Rennaissance," she added in exasperation, at Sean's blank look.

"Oh," Sean mused, looking thoughful, "maybe I can get hired as a science writer? If the hours aren't too long, that is."

Mei-Ling clacked her toungue in annoyance, brushing back her bangs, "You need to think bigger, dude. There are so many discoveries waiting to be made by the one who can combine insights from different fields. I'm saying you could make your own discoveries once you understand everything about everything. Like Curie. Or Leibniz. You keep saying you don't want to work. Well... this is your chance to make your own start-up and retire filthy rich in your twenties. You actually have a chance of pulling it off, unlike most. The key discoveries have already been made.... you just need to combine them to make your recipe."

"The shoulders of giants," whispered Sean with a far-off look.

"What?" Mei-Ling looked surprised.

"A quote in one of the books I assimilated," Sean shrugged, "...if I've seen further than others, it's by standing on the shoulders of giants."

"Exactly," Mei-Ling nodded, her eyes shining, "we need to visit the library after school. I'll draw up a reading schedule for you, so to speak. You said your limit is one book a day?"

"Yeah," Sean nodded, "I found out the hard way."

"Pity," mused Mei-Ling, "we just need to optimize the prerequisite reading so you can fully grok the advanced material without gaps."

They walked in companionable silence, each lost in thought.

"Mei," said Sean suddenly, "been meaning to ask you this... why do you hang out with me?"

"What do you mean?" she frowned.

"You know," Sean looked embarassed, "your grades are leagues ahead of me. We don't even share that many classes, though you keep pushing me to take more advanced stuff. And, knowing you, it's not a crush. I am not star athelete material either. So... why? Why bother hanging out with me... all these years?"

"Oh, that's easy,"Mei-Ling grinned, her laughter tinkling, "you are my... pet project. Think of me as your... managing agent."

"So I'm your hubby, er... hobby now?" Sean shook his head in mock outrage, "Are you going to introduce me to your parents? I could use some more of that Wok soup your mom makes."

"You're impossible," Mei-Ling giggled.

"Hey, Mei," drawled a voice, with cloying sweetness, "still hanging out with the loser, I see. I'd be careful. His loser...ness might rub off on you."

"Tiffany," Sean grimaced, hating the flutter in his stomach in the presence of a pretty girl, "Loser... ness? That's the best you could do? Are you taking this class just so you could be with Jason? Getting him to finish your homework too?"

"None of your business," snapped Tifanny, swinging out her silken blond hair with practised precision, "I'm not the delicate flower who faints if the light is too bright."

"It wasn't just a bright light," scowled Sean, as Mei-Ling squeezed his arm in warning.

"Oh... yeah?" Tiffany sniffed disdainfully, "Turner assured us there was nothing wrong with you. Medically that is. So you're just a sissy."

Sean ignored her with an effort, turning to follow Mei-Ling into the class.

"You're taking AP Chem-2?" Mei-Ling looked back in surprise.

"I tested out of Chem-2 this week," Sean's grin was feral, "they let me change classes since its not yet three weeks."

Mei-Ling blinked in surpise, and then high-fived Sean, "That's... awesome, dude."

They found their seats as Mrs. Holt - their AP chemistry instructor - walked in. She was a pleasant middle-aged woman with short blond hair and a reputation for thoroughness.

To his surprise Sean found he could grasp most of what was taught, which was a novel experience for him, part of the subject matter already familar from books assimilated during his convalescence. His mind wandered going over Mei-Ling's words. She was right, as always. He needed a grander plan to achieve his goals... but what goal? Did he even have one? Sean had always drifted with the eddies and currents of life, going along with whatever his parents or teachers instructed, with minimum effort. It had never occurred to him that he might have some control over his destiny. Despite his academic underachievements to date, Sean was no fool. He knew from hard experience that things that seemed too good to be true, usually were. Get-rich-quick schemes usually led to ruin. Sean's dad had squandered their family savings in the last stock market bubble, which Sean's mom still hadn't forgiven. If Sean was to get-rich-quick, he needed to understand the world and its pitfalls a lot better. To understand why his parents struggled in lower middle class, while Jason's family kept getting richer. To paraphrase one of Sean's comic superheros, life didn't make sense until you beat sense out of it.

"...before I continue to the next topic," Mrs. Holt addressed them, "I'd like to discuss a thermodynamic concept whose importance cannot be overstated for chemistry and other supplementary sciences."

Mrs. Holt firmly considered chemistry to be the pinnacle of modern science and other disciplines as merely supporting roles. She walked over to the writing board and printed the word 'Entropy' in chalk.

"Can anyone explain what entropy is?" Mrs. Holt smiled, "No not you Mei-Ling. Someone else for a change. Yes, Andrea?"

"It's the degree of disorder in a system," Andrea answered.

"That is one way it has been described," Mrs. Holt nodded cautiously, "but what exactly does that mean? Jason, yes?"

"The entropy or disorder of a system always increases," Jason piped up, "like my sisters room that gets more untidy everyday until the housekeeper cleans it." There were titters of amusement.

"Wrong," Sean retorted absently, "Macro-scale disorder is not entropy, that's just a bad analogy. Entropy is a measure of how dispersed energy is. Concentrated energy is low entropy, like chemical energy stored within reactants or kinetic energy of a hydroelectric dam or nuclear energy inside the sun. Once we start using it, concentrated energy always disperses into heat. That's what we call entropy increase. Heck, just overcome the activation energy and there's nothing stopping energy dispersal, since there are many more possible micro-states that contain dispersed energy than microstates with concentrated energy. It's basically a statistical phenomenon that is unlikely to be reversed, like when glass shatters and is what we perceive as the arrow of time..."

Sean's monologue petered away, as he noticed that the class had fallen dead silent. They were all staring at him with something akin to shock. Even Tiffany, who managed to roll her eyes when she saw Sean looking at her.

"What?" Sean shrugged defensively, "I read it in a book. Lighten up."

"An excellent summary," Mrs. Holt smiled in genuine pleasure, "I couldn't have put it better myself... Sean, is it?" She was peering at her student roster, "Ah, you just transferred in to my class."

#

AP Calc was taught by Mr. Emerson, a thin young man with a nervous manner. The squeak of chalk on the board made Sean's hair stand on end.

"Mr. Emerson?" Andrea ventured timidly raising her hand, "why does that differential equation get to have two constants in it's solution?"

"Oh?" Mr. Emerson looked surprised, "Good question. It's a second order ODE... so we integrate it twice to solve it."

"Ah..." Andrea looked confused, "I didn't realize we were actually integrating..."

"Look," Sean interrupted, turning to Andrea, "we are breaking up the second order ODE into two first order ODEs, right?"

Andrea nodded, frowning.

"Now look at that first order equation," Sean gestured at the board, "You got to specify the starting point... the inital values both for the variable you are trying to solve and it's first derivative. Otherwise you don't have enough information to solve it. That's what the two constants are for."

"Ohhh..." Andrea smiled gratefully at Sean, "I get it now."

Again the dead silence, with the rest of the class staring at Sean in bemusement.

"Dude," chuckled Greg, a plump boy with curly red hair and a short temper, with a reputation as a hacker, "Who the heck are you and what have you done with my bud Sean?"

Bud? Sean raised an eyebrow. Sure, Greg didn't mind chatting with him about random stuff, but he never called anyone other than his inner circle of nerds as 'bud'. Had Sean risen a tad in "social standing"?

"That's not a bad way of looking at it," admitted Mr. Emerson, his Adam's apple bobbing nervously, "I'll use that next time... Sean, is it? Ah, you just transferred in."

END OF CHAPTER