find gainful employment

[mrmage]

The following day, Sadde goes to town at a reasonable time to buy a tiny cactus with some of the proceeds from his terribly tedious job, and sneaks it into the bag with his clothing he brings to Isabella's room. It is inside a cute little box, which he offers Isabella the following morning when she wakes up, saying, "Happy three-month anniversary!"

Comments

[alicornucopia]

This one's a little more upstream: modifying nonhumans to produce useful drugs, human-transfusable blood and transplantable organs. Well outside his current specialization.

[mrmage]

Yes, indeed, and might be an option for the far future but definitely not right now.

Next?

[alicornucopia]

Generalized healing for rich people over a wide variety of ailments. Doctors Without Borders. A place that is sort of cagey about what it actually does but may or may not be in the genetic designer baby business.

[mrmage]

Generalized healing for rich people looks fairly interesting, actually. Sadde can volunteer at various hospitals when he's older, but Doctor Without Borders - especially given his psychology - is probably not the best way for him to help people. He goes check that booth out.

[alicornucopia]

The generalized healing for rich people are pretty straightforward that the reason you might work for them is to make utterly spectacular amounts of money, depending on what variety of things you are capable of treating. If you learn to get around faster than an airplane can, you can get a substantial raise for being on-call for emergencies. There is some very delicate language that they encourage their employees to try out unfamiliar skills on non-rich people who aren't paying through the nose to avoid this sort of risk.

[mrmage]

Hmm. Not altogether terrible.

Internship opportunities or anything like that, for people who are in the process of figuring this stuff out?

[alicornucopia]

If you'll sign a long-term and toothy contract you can be considered in breach of if you don't have usable healing abilities by the end of it, they'll give you a pretty generous stipend and some token supervision to discourage procrastinating in the meantime.

[mrmage]

Well. That... looks pretty interesting. Any more relevant info on the flyer?

[alicornucopia]

It's an ad, basically, heavy on the "make lots of money!" and "help sick people!" and lower on anything else. There's contact information, though.

[mrmage]

Well. He goes up to Isabella. "What d'you think, ma'am?"

[eclipsi]

"Well, it really depends on what you're aiming for, but I'd be sort of nervous about the terms on which any of these people are offering to sponsor your further magical development. It's not all on the 'generous alumni' model, and a lot can change over time."

[mrmage]

"Change enough for me to not want to be a healer anymore?"

[eclipsi]

Shrug. "Someone discovers they can do time travel and you get excited about that instead. The company you signed on with is revealed to have abhorrent practices or workplace conditions of some kind or you just can't get along with your boss. You try healing and the first time you have to look at a severe prolapse you want to go hide under a table."

[mrmage]

"I'm pretty sure I'm immune to body horror by now," he protests weakly.

[eclipsi]

"Bodies can get really horrifying, pet, I don't think you've seen everything, but maybe that wouldn't faze you, I don't know. I still wouldn't lock in the next twenty years of your life the minute you're legally able to sign a contract."

[mrmage]

"Yyyyeah, no, I mean, you're right," he sighs.

[eclipsi]

"But something shorter-term might not be a bad idea, at least compared to courting student debt and overscheduling in college," she acknowledges.

[mrmage]

"But apparently, at least when it comes to healing rich people, there isn't anything exactly short term."

[eclipsi]

"Well, there would be if you could already do versatile or heavy-duty healings. But if they have to take you while they can't charge huge amounts of money for your services they have to make sure they hold on to you to get their investment back."

[mrmage]

"Does anyone even have that at my age? I mean, my two-year detour through gendershifting isn't standard, sure, but I've been working on healing nonstop since then, and besides the way my magic feels I think the gendershifting thing might not even have been that much of a detour."

[eclipsi]

"No, nobody has that at our age, which is why they're pushing the twenty-year contracts; but if you learn to heal independently I bet you they have different arrangements for twenty-five-year-olds who can cure cancer."

[mrmage]

"Enh, but what I wanted was to start healing as fast as possible."

[eclipsi]

"Healing, or getting money for it?"

[mrmage]

"Healing. The standard way to do it has a large security time margin which could be spent working on immortality if I could figure out immediately when I was good enough to fully deploy."

[eclipsi]

"Well, there's really not a way to tell for sure if you're good enough to deploy, in advance of internal certainty, without trying live subjects, but you could probably find somebody who can fix your mistakes who'd supervise you for a test or two."